Stephen Mangan to play a pregnant man in new drama Birthday
After appearing in the same role on stage in the Joe Penhill play, the Episodes star will reprise the part of a man in labour in a new Sky Arts drama
Episodes star Stephen Mangan is to play a pregnant man in his latest TV project.
Sky Arts’ adaptation of Joe Penhall’s 2012 Royal Court play Birthday sees Mangan reprise the role of Ed who endures a caesarian birth with his high-flying wife by his side.
“For the first time, viewers are able to get right into the delivery room to witness the spectacle of a heavily pregnant man in all his hormonal, bloated, mammary-swollen glory, up close and – maybe a little too – personal,” says Mangan.
His wife Lisa will be played by Death Comes to Pemberley’s Anna Maxwell Martin who replaces Lisa Dillon from the stage version.
Sherlock star Louise Brearley - who plays Molly Hooper in the hit Benedict Cumberbatch drama - will also reprise her stage role as one of the doctors helping to deliver the child.
The director is Roger Michell, who helmed the recent ITV drama The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies.
Sky has also commissioned American thriller writer Harlan Coben to write his first original story for television.
The Five – airing on Sky Living – will follow a group of friends haunted by the disappearance of one of their younger brothers 25 years earlier while he was in their care, and forced to revisit the past when his DNA turns up at the scene of a murder…
