1 of 3 | Dawn French stars in the new comedy, “Can You Keep a Secret?” premiering Thursday. Photo courtesy of Paramount+
NEW YORK, Feb. 12 (UPI) — The Vicar of Dibley icon Dawn French — one half of the comedy duo French and Saunders — is back on television Thursday with the hilarious new series, Can You Keep a Secret?
Streaming on Paramount+, the show stars French as Debbie, a lower middle-class woman who doesn’t try too hard to correct the life insurance company that mistakenly declares her husband William (Mark Heap) dead and issues a huge payout to her family.
Problem is, William, a loner who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, is actually still alive, so Debbie throws a funeral for him, then keeps him hidden in their loft, only telling their horrified son Harold (Craig Roberts) the truth months into the scheme.
The sitcom was created by Simon Mayhew-Archer, the son of Dibley scribe Paul Mayhew-Archer, who lives with Parkinson’s in real life and served as an adviser on Can You Keep a Secret?
“Over the last 15 years, we have watched what’s happened to [Simon’s] dad, who honestly couldn’t be more cheerful about having Parkinson’s. He’s hilarious about it,” French, 68, told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
“I’m not taking away from the fact that it’s a challenge for him, because it certainly is. But he’s taken a show to Edinburgh about it. He has a podcast. He’s written gags because he can’t stop himself from writing jokes,” she said. “But, along with that, comes the massive unfairness and the injustice of what happens with insurance companies when you’ve got Parkinson’s Disease. It seems that, in the small print, it’s left out.”
The show’s fictional story was inspired by the Mayhew-Archer family’s experiences, as well as the true-crime case of John and Anne Darwin, a British couple convicted of fraud in 2008 after they faked John’s death in a canoeing mishap and enjoyed a nice life paid for by insurance money they were not entitled to.
“This curious thing happens to this odd little family. It drops into Debbie’s lap,” French said about the comedy series.
“She doesn’t go looking to be kind of massively fraudulent. But, a couple of things happen. He’s mistakenly pronounced dead and then she goes to the undertaker to kind of own up to it,” French explained.
“But there’s a series of stupid events there and it’s when the undertaker says: ‘Make sure you get lots of copies of death certificate. You’ll need them for the insurance,’ that triggers that sort of self-righteous part of her — or just the righteous part of her — that thinks this is unfair. She just thinks, ‘Well, actually, we could get the money we have paid in after all.’ And she manages to frame it like that for herself.