Today we’ve announced three brand new comedy series coming to Sky in 2014, continuing our support of home-grown British and Irish comedy.

The first of two brand new commissions is Mr Sloane, which will be written and directed by Robert B. Weide, the Emmy award-winning director and producer of Curb Your Enthusiasm.  The show stars Nick Frost (Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) as Jeremy Sloane, a button-down 1960’s man in crisis.

A bittersweet romantic comedy, the series represents the first original project for British television for multi-award winning writer, director and producer Robert B. Weide, whose credits also include the Emmy Award nominated Woody Allen: A Documentary and Academy Award® nominated Lenny Bruce: Swear To Tell The Truth. Mr Sloane will air on Sky Atlantic in 2014.

The second new series, Yonderland, brings together the BAFTA-winning team behind Horrible Histories, who will make their first show for Sky. The show follows a 33-year-old mum who unexpectedly finds herself in an extraordinary world.  Matthew Baynton, Martha Howe-Douglas, Jim Howick, Simon Farnaby, Laurence Rickard and Ben Willbond will all write and star in the series, which will also feature puppetry sequences from Baker Coogan, long-time collaborators with the Jim Henson Company.

And thirdly the critically acclaimed Moone Boy has been re-commissioned for a third series, with its writer and star Chris O’Dowd set to make his directorial debut.  The series will be filmed later this year, picking up the story of the imaginative Martin Moone (David Rawle) as he grows up in rural Ireland. Written by Nick Vincent Murphy and Chris O’Dowd, the series will also feature Chris making his directorial debut. Honoured earlier this year with an IFTA Award, and filmed in Boyle, Ireland, the second series will launch on Sky 1 this autumn.

The new comedy commissions are part of Sky’s commitment to increase its investment in original British and Irish content and builds on the successful comedy strand developed over the last two years. Recent highlights have included the BAFTA-nominated Stella, the RTS award-winning Alan Partridge: Welcome To The Places Of My Life, the British Comedy Award-winning Hunderby, the critically acclaimed A Young Doctor’s Notebook as well as popular returning series such as Mount Pleasant and Trollied.

Since launching Sky’s push into comedy in 2010 across our four entertainment channels, the genre has flourished under our investment, establishing Sky firmly within the television comedy landscape. In the space of three years, Sky’s comedy output has grown to incorporate six returning series on Sky 1 alone, alongside popular series and programmes on Sky Living, Sky Atlantic and Sky Arts.

Now our focus is on keeping up the momentum. The outstanding talent at the heart of new these series demonstrates the range and ambition of our output and our continued commitment to giving our customers the best in home-grown comedy.