Tim Renkow, the star of Primal’s comedy Jerk for BBC Three has been nominated in the Best Actor category of the 2022 BAFTA TV Awards.
The series piloted as A Brief History Of Tim in BBC Three’s 2016 Comedy Feeds, showcasing emerging new talent, before its first series was commissioned and aired in 2019. Series one won a MIPCOM Diversify TV Excellence Award for its representation of disability and was described by Ian Hyland as “the sharpest new comedy I have watched in years” in a 5* Daily Mirror review.
Jerk series two recently aired on BBC One, and is available now on iPlayer.
Jerk (4×22’) is written by Shaun Pye and Tim Renkow, and is a co-production between Roughcut TV and Primal Media for BBC Three. The Executive Producers are Ash Atalla and Alex Smith for Roughcut TV, and Mat Steiner for Primal Media. It is produced by Roughcut’s Rebecca Murrell, and the Commissioning Editor for BBC Comedy is Alex Moody.
Primal Media Sitcom Jerk Nominated for Broadcast Award
Roughcut TV and Primal Media’s four-part scripted comedy Jerk, for BBC Three, starring Tim Renkow, has been nominated for a Broadcast Awatd in the Best Multichannel Programme category.
The awards take place on 10 February at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House on Park Lane.
Renkow was nominated for Breakthrough Act at the RTS Awards 2020 and Jerk won the Representation of Disability Award at the Mipcom Diversify TV Excellence awards. In November 2020, Tim was also selected as a writer-performer for Bafta Breakthrough. Jerk was also nominated for a Rose D’or.
Jerk is a co-production between Roughcut TV and Primal Media for BBC Three and was commissioned by Fiona Campbell, Controller BBC Three and Shane Allen, Director Comedy Commissioning at the BBC. It is produced by Rebecca Murrell (Trollied, Jerk series one) and directed by Tom McKay (Drunk History, The Agency). The executive producers are Alex Smith and Ash Atalla for Roughcut TV and Mat Steiner for Primal Media. The Commissioning Editor for the BBC is Ben Caudell.
Roughcut TV and Primal Media’s four-part scripted comedy Jerk, for BBC Three, starring Tim Renkow, has been nominated for a Rose D’Or in the Comedy-Drama and Sitcom category.
Selected from over 750 entries across 12 categories. The shortlist was voted for by a jury of 150 broadcast executives and leading producers, from across the international television industry.
This year Rose d’Or Awards will be presented in a virtual ceremony, hosted Sue Perkins on Rosedor.com on November 29th.
Renkow was nominated for Breakthrough Act at the RTS Awards 2020 and Jerk won the Representation of Disability Award at the Mipcom Diversify TV Excellence awards. In November 2020, Tim was also selected as a writer-performer for Bafta Breakthrough.
Jerk is a co-production between Roughcut TV and Primal Media for BBC Three and was commissioned by Fiona Campbell, Controller BBC Three and Shane Allen, Director Comedy Commissioning at the BBC. It is produced by Rebecca Murrell (Trollied, Jerk series one) and directed by Tom McKay (Drunk History, The Agency). The executive producers are Alex Smith and Ash Atalla for Roughcut TV and Mat Steiner for Primal Media. The Commissioning Editor for the BBC is Ben Caudell.
JERK REVIEW: Still The Most Outrageously un-PC Comedy on TV
Tim Renkow is back as a sociopathic puppeteer with cerebral palsy – who now identifies as able-bodied – in this superbly awkward comedy about society’s discomfort with disability
The jerk is back. “Do I look like a terrorist?” he asks airport security as he returns from his native US to Britain. Tim has cerebral palsy and is twitchier than your average nervous suicide bomber. “Actually, you do,” the functionary replies. “You look like you might have been blown up by one of your own badly made devices.”
Is it OK to laugh at such an evidently disablist joke? Perhaps. After all, it was co-written by Tim Renkow, who has cerebral palsy, in a BBC One sitcom about a character called Tim who has cerebral palsy.
What’s clear is that Renkow isn’t writing a show that makes for easy viewing. Renkow plays the eponymous jerk who revels in making the able-bodied feel uncomfortable.
Sometimes there are easier laughs. It’s clearly OK to laugh at Britain’s border control, a gift to comedy that keeps on giving. “But obviously you’re just a dick,” the security lackey continues. “I can’t be bothered with processing you.” “It’s so easy to get into this country,” says Tim as he sweeps past. Jerk isn’t saying anything as overtly critical of government policy as that Britain’s Covid hospitalisation and death rates rose thanks to stupidly admitting travellers infected with the Delta variant, but that’s how I decoded this exchange.
In the first series of Jerk, Tim’s cerebral palsy gave him carte blanche to get away with saying what others dare not. He was Larry David with a twist – none of the biddable Brits this unpleasant American met, especially his super-gullible friend Idris, dared confront Tim for his sociopathic ways.
In series two, Renkow ramps up the jeopardy while again demonstrating that he is to political correctness what Boris Johnson is to statesmanship. Back in Britain, Tim wangles a rent-free flat and a student visa. His chosen field is puppetry, via a postgraduate course. Why? Possibly to give the lie to the adage that you can’t be what you can’t see. But he’s too much of a slacker to fulfil that destiny. Tim just wants to work the system and be 3,000 miles away from his ball-breaking mother, played by Lorraine Bracco, who pops up on video chat to tell her son to use condoms: “Don’t be getting anybody pregnant, OK, ‘cause they’ll come out like you.” So sweet.
Here, though, is the twist. Between series one and two, Tim has gone voguishly identity-fluid. Tim self-describes as able-bodied and double-dares anyone to gainsay him. This results in superbly awkward scenes in which our hero struggles to get in or out of a chair at the college bar; no one, at the risk of undermining his right to self-designate as whatever he wants to be, can help him. “We are living in a post-label society,” says Idris. “If Tim decides to identify as able-bodied, that’s fine.”
Even Idris, the kind of man who unironically wears a “This is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt, is trumped in virtue signalling by the student he fancies, Bobbiey (played by the droll Helen Monks). The more she denounces him for political incorrectness, the more he adores her. When he offers to get drinks, she snarls: “Can you not handle someone you perceive as a woman paying for a round?”
The rest of the first episode is a funny meditation on the absurdity of a society that seems predicated on giving everyone the right to self-define but readily shows its true colours in crisis. When Tim manages to blow away £200 of cocaine at a student party, Bobbiey refuses to accept that his disability caused the accident. “He’s just another able-bodied cis white man who thinks he can do anything,” she says, tangled up in her own ostensibly post-oppressive ideology.
Happily, though, there is one person more appalling than Tim. Ruth, the uncaring carer (played with majestic surliness by Sharon Rooney) returns as an empathy-free zone who exists, like Tim only more so, to exploit virtuous numpties like Bobbiey and Idris. In fact, Jerk isn’t so much a sitcom about disability as about how the virtuous get mugged off by sociopaths. There’s a running gag about Ruth demanding Idris clap for carers whenever she comes into the room. In truth, there’s never been a cause less worthy of applause than Ruth. Tim’s a jerk, but Ruth’s a sociopathic slacker. Which should be the title for her spin-off series.
LANDMARK REVIEW: More Innovative Arts Coverage from Sky
“Yet more innovative arts coverage from Sky. In this new series, 18 of the UK’s most exciting sculptors and makers are commissioned to come up with ideas for a landmark piece of art to be sited in Coventry, this year’s City of Culture. The pieces from the artists in tonight’s opening heat, are inspired.” (The Telegraph)
JERK REVIEW: Scorched-earth black comedy with a hint of sweetness
It’s hard not to admire Tim Renkow’s commitment to being as dark as possible as Tim, a man with cerebral palsy who also happens to be a cynical narcissist.
Disabled people are still shamefully under-represented on television. The second series of Tim Renkow’sJerkset out to right that wrong in the most combative fashion imaginable. This was scorched-earth comedy, where sacred cows were piled atop a pyre and set gleefully alight. It was often funny. And even when it wasn’t, it was hard not to admire its commitment to being as dark as possible.
Renkow, the American actor and comedian who wrote the show with Shaun Pye (There She Goes), plays “Tim”, a man with cerebral palsy who also happens to be a cynical narcissist in the tradition of Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm – and uses his disability, and others’ fear of causing offence, to his advantage.
The series began as Tim returned to the UK from the States to begin a postgraduate course. Socially conscious pansexual student Bobbiey (Helen Monks) was one of the first targets of Renkow’s satire. She was mocked for being intolerant beneath her “woke” veneer, in evidence when she described campaigner Malala Yousafzai as “a woman who’s decided to squander her moral capital and go to private school”. When she went along with Tim’s mischievous identification as “able-bodied”, the audience was clearly supposed to laugh at her and her right-on views, rather than with her.
The series continued to strike the same note of teasing nihilism as the first, and Tim continued to wield a wrecking ball. He pressured Bobbiey into procuring drugs and then accidentally spilled £200 worth of “ethically sourced” cocaine all over the carpet. And he deliberately neglected to apply for student accommodation so that his pal Idris (Rob Madin) would have to put him up instead (awkwardly this left Idris nowhere to sleep).
The gags seemed determined to touch as many nerves as possible – when Bobbiey asked if Tim wanted a drink he requested a “consensual Sex on the Beach”. He later turned up at an exercise class where he got a kick out of interrupting the fun by falling over.
Those around Tim proved just as obnoxious as the anti-hero: his mother (Goodfellas and Sopranos star Lorraine Bracco) advised her son to exploit the freedoms of uni by sourcing as much cocaine as possible, Idris strolled around naked banging on about his positive body image; and his carer friend Ruth (Sharon Rooney) dropped an old lady she was helping to the loo when she saw Tim knocking on the window.
The only person to come out looking good was Adrian Chiles, who popped up in a cameo in episode two. Here, Tim created havoc at a gym run by a pushy Paralympian Claire (Lisa Hammond), whose enthusiasm he “couldn’t handle”.
Yet for all the comedic carpet bombing, an undeniable sweetness lingered under the surface. Jerk didn’t expect the viewer to admire Tim. But his passion for life and his determination to live it by his own rules nonetheless contained a sly feel-good message. This was a black comedy that looked towards the light.
Gemma Cairney to Host New Sky Arts Series Landmark
Broadcaster, DJ and author Gemma Cairney will delve into the purpose and power of public art as she joins Sky Arts on a mission to create the UK’s next major landmark. She’ll be joined along the way by two expert judges – curator Clare Lilley and visual artist Hetain Patel – as well as six famous faces, all of them ready to root out the best artistic talent in the region or nation they call home.
Now filming across the country, Sky Arts’ bold new series produced by Primal Media (Jerk, Home Free), will see artists from Glasgow to Guildford create a new wave of Great British public art. Six heats will take place across the UK, each spotlighting three artists who will compete to create local landmarks for their home region.
Working across mediums varying from ceramics and bronze to LEDs and inflatables, the artists will build, weld and sculpt under the watchful eyes of two expert judges, Clare and Hetain, as well as the celebrity guest judge representing their region or nation. The pressure is on.
At the end of each heat, the landmarks will be unveiled to the local community, who will join the judges to deliberate on which piece best sums up their area. The winning artists will gain a coveted place in the final where they will pitch for a national landmark which one of them will be commissioned to create. The final landmark will be on display in Coventry, UK City of Culture for 2021.
Filming begins on a new series of BBC Three comedy Jerk
Filming began March 29th at locations in South East London on the second series of Roughcut TV and Primal Media’s four-part scripted comedy, Jerk for BBC Three.
Series two will be co-written by Tim Renkow (Funny Festival Live, Bobby and Harriet Get Married) and Shaun Pye (There She Goes, Frankie Boyle’s New World Order). Returning to star alongside Tim in series two is the Academy Award and Emmy-nominated Actress Lorraine Bracco (The Sopranos, Goodfellas), Sharon Rooney (Dumbo, My Mad Fat Diary) and Rob Madin (Man Like Mobeen, Carters Get Rich).
Jerk is a black comedy that revolves around the character of Tim (played by Renkow), a man who uses the fact that he has cerebral palsy to try and get away with anything. Tim makes people feel uncomfortable. He knows that because he does it on purpose. But that’s his problem, time spent taking aim at small targets means he constantly misses out on life’s bigger prizes.
Co-creator, co-writer, associate producer and star of Jerk, Tim Renkow, says: “We’re back! I can’t wait to get back to work, see everyone and contribute to the fall of western society.”
Shane Allen, Director of Comedy Commissioning at the BBC, says: “Great to have the most wickedly funny and boundary pushing show on British TV back for more no holds barred comedy. Jaw dropping and side splitting in equal measure.”
Rebecca Murrell, Producer, says: “Tim Renkow is back, fully vaccinated and more outrageous than ever.”
Renkow was nominated for Breakthrough Act at the RTS Awards 2020 and Jerk won the Representation of Disability Award at the Mipcom Diversify TV Excellence awards. In November 2020, Tim was also selected as a writer-performer for Bafta Breakthrough.
Jerk is a co-production between Roughcut TV and Primal Media for BBC Three and was commissioned by Fiona Campbell, Controller BBC Three and Shane Allen, Director Comedy Commissioning at the BBC. It is produced by Rebecca Murrell (Trollied, Jerk series one) and directed by Tom McKay (Drunk History, The Agency). The executive producers are Alex Smith and Ash Atalla for Roughcut TV and Mat Steiner for Primal Media. The Commissioning Editor for the BBC is Ben Caudell.
SKY ARTS TO AIR NEW SHOW “LANDMARK” FROM PRIMAL MEDIA
Sky Arts has announced that in 2021 it will air Landmark, an ambitious 8 x 60-minute series from Primal Media in which artists and local communities will join forces to create new public landmarks all over Britain, in response to the current debate about what we want to look at and commemorate in our public spaces.
Any artists who are interested in participating can email us at:
Primal Commissioned to Make New Parenting Format “It Pays to Behave” for Channel 4
In this exciting new family game show with a twist, two parents must find the parenting expert within themselves for the chance to win a cash prize, all without their teenage children knowing a thing.
