Transaction is a new ITV2 comedy set on the night shift at the fictional supermarket chain Pellocks.
Created by and starring comedian Jordan Gray, the series sees branch manager Simon (Nick Frost) hiring transgender woman Liv (played by Gray) in a bid to repair the store's reputation after a PR disaster. Unfortunately for him, Liv isn't interested in playing by the rules, and soon turns the supermarket into her own personal playground.
Here's everything you need to know about the series...
Transaction release date
Transaction launches on Tuesday, June 24 at 10.05pm on ITV2.
The full six-part series will be available to stream on ITVX from Tuesday, June 24.
Transaction cast
Series creator Jordan Gray stars as Liv, with The Nevers' Nick Frost as Simon. Thomas Gray (Peacock) plays Tom, Liv's long-suffering best friend and the store's assistant manager, Francesca Mills (Silent Witness) plays pathologically nice Millie, and Kayla Meikle (Coma) plays cynical Beefy Linda.
Transaction plot
Supermarket boss Simon finds himself in hot water when the marketing campaign that he masterminded for grocery chain Pellocks turns out to contain unintentionally offensive language that gets him accused of transphobia and prompts the LGBTQ+ community to start a protest outside the shop.
Desperate to demonstrate Pellocks' commitment to equality and diversity, Simon hurriedly hires Liv — the transgender roommate of his employee Tom — to work on the night shift, hoping that having her on staff will placate the protestors.
However, Liv quickly realises that Simon has only hired her to make himself and the store look good, and decides to wield this to her advantage. Knowing that Simon can't afford the PR nightmare that would come from sacking her, Liv decides to embrace her chaotic side and cause havoc at work.
As Simon and Tom try in vain to keep Liv in line, while colleagues Millie and Beefy Linda simply try to get on with their jobs, Liv's not afraid to go wild in the aisles...
Is there a trailer for Transaction?
There is! ITV have released a teaser for the series, and you can check it out below:
Interview with Jordan Gray and Nick Frost for Transaction
What was the inspiration for the series?
Jordan: "I wrote a sitcom where two comedians were hanging out in a comedy club, and executives said 'nobody will want to watch that, it's far too insular — can it be somewhere a bit more relatable please?' All of my friends used to work in retail, and the amount of fun we had when they would turn off the lights at the end of the night and we'd fight with donuts and stuff like that, so this seemed like a really nice place to do it. I love that it's set on the night shift as well, because that's when it gets a bit woozy and psychedelic. People's dark humour comes out overnight, for some reason — it's that crazy period between 11pm and 6am."
How would you describe your characters?
Jordan: "Liv is an egomaniac! She's been mooching on her best friend's couch for the best part of half a year, having come back into his life as a woman — they were best friends at school. She loves Tom, and he works at the supermarket, so really the only chance she's going to get to hang out with him is if she works there as well. She's brought in because of a PR disaster, but slowly falls in love with all the people around her, and learns that maybe being part of a family is better than being this lone wolf that she started off as."
Nick: "I think Simon is broken, mentally and spiritually. He's kind of lost everything: his wife hates him, he's sleeping at Pellocks, and then on top of that, the one thing he thinks he's good at — being a manager at Pellocks — he just completely gets wrong in the first episode. He now risks losing everything, and he has to turn to Liv to try and help him get back on his feet."
So we'll see Liv starting to appreciate her job and her colleagues as the series progresses?
Jordan: "Yeah, the fact that her best friend is working there is the main reason she sticks around. But it is a playground! I like the wish fulfilment of watching a show where you can see what people would do overnight in a supermarket. I always think about what I would do if I got locked in a shopping centre overnight!"
Nick: "The show's got that kind of weird feeling like all the characters have been killed in separate incidents, and this is like their purgatory or their heaven, because it's all so nuts! I think Jordan hit the nail on the head when she talked about it being psychedelic, because there is that aspect to it where you're like 'what are they doing, why are they all here?' — I think it's because they all died!"
Jordan: "Honestly, when we were first pitching it, I suggested that in the finale, they would walk out of the door and it was just a white void that went on forever. I like the idea that it's its own little world. I pitched it as NBC's Community in a supermarket, if you ever saw that show — it's is set in a community college, but you can tell any story. We could do a big Tolkien-esque adventure from one side of the shop to the other; the setting just becomes a stage for whatever you want to tell."
Did you film in a real supermarket?
Jordan: "It was a set! The art department did an amazing job, they're the MVP of this show — you'd just pick anything up and it was branded with this made-up supermarket. We got an email every night saying, 'stop taking things off the shelves, this is still a set, it's not a real supermarket' — I don't know if Nick got those emails, but I did!"
Nick: "I did get them, but I wasn't going to stop! If someone's going to leave Cadbury's Wispas just lying around, I'm definitely going to eat one."
Jordan: "Cola-flavoured Sour Patch Kids, that's what I nicked."
Nick: "But the set did get weirdly smellier the longer it went on as all the veg slowly died!"
