Meet Grandpa Corona in new Sussex online comedy

The episodes, five minutes long, tell the story of Grandpa Corona, played by Richard.

As Richard explains: “Myself and Chris (Goodnight Sweetheart), finding ourselves out of work, decided to create this little comedy.

“The idea was to create something that reflected what was happening and something that we could actually film whilst socially isolating. In fact, Chris was recovering from the virus and some of the cast have never actually met. We have had lots of positive response.”

It has certainly succeeded in its main purpose – which was to cheer people up, not least Richard himself.

He and the team behind it are now hoping it might be picked up and funded for a second series.

“It is really me and Chris, and we have pulled out other people as we needed them.

“When lockdown happened, Chris and I decided that we would like to start working on something, and I had a totally different idea. And then I woke up one morning and I thought we needed to do something that we could produce ourselves. Nobody was doing anything at that moment. Everything was shut down.

“And I came up with the idea of Grandpa Corona. I had to do something. I get depressed. I suffer from depression, and I had stopped working all of a sudden. I know that I have to be creating something. It keeps a few demons at bay. And I thought it would be great to be working with a few other people who would be wanting to do something.

“The episodes are five minutes each, and it is about a guy called Dave (I am playing Dave) and his daughter and granddaughter and because he coughs, his daughter sends him to his room for two weeks.

“He is in communication with his best friend Frank (played by Chris) and they Zoom every day.

“I knocked out ten episodes. It was a collaboration really. Each one of them had about eight to ten drafts. I wanted to reflect what was going on and also to bring light to a not very nice situation with some sort of comedy.

“But there is also darkness in it. There is sadness. I wanted it to reflect what was happening and that there should be episodes in there that people will recognise.

“In episode three, Dave decides to sneak downstairs at midnight in order to raid the fridge and the booze cupboard. His daughter ends up having to sterilise it all. He is in trouble!”

The series was all filmed by Zoom: “We can record on Zoom and we have got an editor that I have never met, that I have never seen and that I have never even spoken to.

“But he is a great editor, a really good young lad. We have sent him lots of different clips. He is effectively the director, but we haven’t told him that yet!”

Richard, who is also a Lewes town councillor, is delighted with the results: “I have done quite a few other things, but we are really pleased with this. Chris had the virus. There were times when he really had to drag himself up. But it has really helped to do this. We had something that we could feel passionate about and that we were determined to do. We have had some lovely responses. I was walking through Lewes the other day, and someone I vaguely knew eyeballed me and shouted ‘Grandpa Corona!’”

Richard and Chris would love to do a second series: “But we would need someone to pick the series up and pay us some money. Chris and I are both working on other things. But if someone paid us, we would be very happy!”

See: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtN3iUpN3JLTnvhOu-bRIOw

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