Bill Bailey will star in a spoof music video with Emma Thompson in one of a number of “funny Valentines” to be made on-demand first on the BBC’s iPlayer.
As part of a season of Valentine’s Day programming, Bailey will re-imagine one of his most popular songs, Love Song, with a new video in which an obsessive loner’s life is turned upside down by a mysterious beauty, played by Thompson.
Other funny Valentines in the iPlayer series feature Matt Berry, Russ Abbot and the creators of Modern Toss.
Berry, the star of Channel 4’s Toast of London, will voice wildlife footage of courting and mating rituals in Wild Love, a sequel to his “documentary” Lone Wolf.
A six-minute Modern Toss animation, The Lady and the Fly, will tell a “groundbreaking tale of inter-species heartbreak” when a lovestruck fly falls for the woman of his dreams, voiced by Mackenzie Crook and Paul Kaye.
Abbot will star in Last Chance by Roy Clarke, the writer of Still Open All Hours, playing a man recording one final message for his wife who has left him.
They are among nine love-themed commissions that will go live on the iPlayer on 13 February, a day before Valentine’s Day. Other shows will star comedians Sara Pascoe, Nick Helm and Limmy.
The BBC has also commissioned a number of new iPlayer drama shorts and three new episodes of its Private View strand, in which Tinie Tempah will preview a new Alexander McQueen exhibition at the V&A and Abbey Clancy will go behind the scenes at London fashion week.
Victoria Jaye, head of TV content for the iPlayer, said the on-demand platform was a “huge creative opportunity to push the boundaries of storytelling and engage audiences in new ways”.
Documentary maker Adam Curtis’s iPlayer-only project, Bitter Lake, about Afghanistan, will be available from 9pm on Sunday.
