Pair will play siblings in show called The Choir

James Corden and Ruth Jones’s new Apple TV show is to be called The Choir.

Hollywood website Deadline reports that the pair will be playing brother and sister Ben and Lisa in the series, which was first revealed last week.

The plot is said to revolve around Ben retiring to a sleepy English town after having spent several years away – an echo of Corden’s real experiences coming back to the UK after spending eight years in Los Angeles on the Late Late Show.

According to Deadline, ‘Ben is forced to return to a life he never wanted, a town he never liked and a family from which he’s estranged’.

Filming is expected to start on the eight-part series next year. Last week, The Sun reported that the Gavin & Stacey co-creators had signed an £8million contract for the deal.

Deadline says insiders ‘steered away’ from it being a multi-million pound deal for the pair.  However it is conceivable the quoted figure could be the full cost of making the series.  

The Sun last week said the show would feature ‘an all British cast’  and quoted an unnamed source as saying: ‘As you might expect, it is uplifting, gentle and very funny. They wanted to bring something full of heart and warmth back to screens.’

Apple TV+, which already airs Corden’s Carpool Karaoke, is said to have won a bidding war for the series.

Corden is currently in New York starring in the Broadway play Art alongside Neil Patrick Harris and Bobby Cannavale, while Jones recently filmed the Harlan Coben drama Run Away for Netflix, alongside a cast that also included Minnie Driver, James Nesbitt,  Ingrid Oliver, Amy Gledhill and Tracy-Ann Oberman.

Published: 8 Sep 2025