Following the success of his BAFTA award-winning comedy Stath Lets Flats, Jamie Demetriou secured himself a Netflix special. The comedian has described his new creation, A Whole Lifetime With Jamie Demetriou, as “birth to death in songs and sketches” and the streaming service’s “first British sketch special slash show.”
The show features sketches tracing childhood, adolescence and adulthood, including a Love Island parody – Kiss Island, and teenagers that would rather sit on their phones than have sex with each other. The cast of Stath Let’s Flats reunited with Demetriou for the show, minus his sister, Natasia Demetriou, who was busy while filming.
Talking to The Hollywood Reporter, the comedian discussed the process behind creating the special, which aired on Tuesday (February 28th). Explaining that Netflix approached him with the offer, Demetriou said, “Initially, it was going to be a more sprawling sketch show and then and then we figured that an hour is a testing amount of time for something that isn’t narrative. So I wanted to put in enough of an arc to maintain an audience’s attention for an hour and thought the structure of life felt like a fairly familiar one to a lot of people.”
He also stated that Netflix was “very laid back” about his ideas, giving him a “lot of free rein.” Moreover, Demetriou was pleased to watch the sketches back and discover “themes in them that maybe weren’t intended.” He continued, “Every sketch, in its own way, is about people trying to distract themselves from anxiety — to distract themselves from puberty. And then the royal wedding sketch is about people just geeing themselves up to get through the day and just using whatever’s in front of them.”
Demetriou also discussed the fate of the beloved Stath Lets Flats, stating that he is “waiting for the right idea to strike” because he “hate[s] the idea of sort of it being finished.” He added, “But how difficult it was to conjure the plot for season three, makes me feel like for series four I’d need to find a pretty dynamic hook or reason for it to exist in order to do those characters justice.” Although Demetriou has toyed with the idea of creating a special, he declared, “I’ve been working on it for 10 years, and I need to make sure that as an adult and a human, I’m experiencing more than letting agents in my writing. And I think that it does a world of good for characters to take a break.”
Watch the trailer for A Whole Lifetime With Jamie Demetriou below.
