Star says he'll be filming later this year

John Cleese sitcom Hold The Sunset is to get a second series, the comedian has revealed.

The star disclosed that a another season of the BBC One comedy – which also stars  Alison Steadman, Jason Watkins, Rosie Cavaliero, Joanna Scanlan, Anne Reid and Peter Egan–  would be shot this autumn.

It came as he repeated his insistence that he was quitting Britain after MPs voted against tighter regulation of the press.

In a series of tweets this morning, Cleese detailed a conversation he had with a Sun journalist, in which he queried why the paper had described him as ‘red-faced’.

He said: ‘I [a]sked him whether it was because the Sun thought I was bluffing about leaving the UK. He seemed to think I was, so I explained that I will be leaving - at least [until] May’s government is voted out - in November, after I've finished shooting the second series of Hold the Sunset.’

Cleese’s first BBC comedy since Fawlty Towers launched in February with an impressive six million viewers, although that number had fallen to 3.75million within a few weeks.

Critics were strongly divided over the show. The Guardian likened it to ‘a mocktail served at Dignitas’ , but The Telegraph called it ‘wonderful’ and The Daily Mail awarded it four stars, despite acknowledged the show relied on ‘laboured slapstick where ageing men get into scrapes and women cluck over them’.

Cleese, one of the frontmen of the Hacked Off campaign seeking fresh curbs on newspapers, this week announced that he was quitting Britain after the Commons voted not to implement the second phase of recommendations from the Leveson inquiry.

He tweeted: ‘I'll be back when they move forward on Leveson. But not till then. I believe this is the essential first step in getting our surprisingly corrupt institutions back on track.’

As well as owning property in Bath, Cleese has homes in the US and Monaco, both of which have laxer laws regulating the press than the UK.

Read Chortle’s review of Hold The Sunset here.

Published: 11 May 2018