Ghosts star Kiell Smith-Bynoe on why sitcoms stopped being funny: ‘After Fleabag, everything’s a drama’

“I hadn’t realised how many people I knew watch sewing,” says Kiell Smith-Bynoe. “And the amount of people were surprised by my being on it. They were like ‘you’re doing that? How has that even come onto your radar?’ They were surprised for the same reasons I was: it was not something I expected to come my way. I never went to drama school thinking I would host the Great British Sewing Bee.”

It is true the 35-year-old was not the most obvious choice for the new presenter of the BBC’s primetime sewing extravaganza, which returns this month, with a new team of ambitious seamsters hoping to be crowned Britain’s finest. This Bake Off-with-thimbles began in 2013 and is now in its tenth series. The presenters have evolved from the obvious anchor (Claudia Winkleman), through popular comedians (Joe Lycett, Sara Pascoe), and now they’ve turned to Smith-Bynoe, an actor best known for his brilliant turns in ensemble comedies, like Stath Lets Flats, Man Like Mobeen and Ghosts, as well as a memorable go on Taskmaster.

“Look, sewing is just a natural fit [for me],” he jokes, over lunch in Battersea, during a break in rehearsal for his other project, a performance of Gogol’s The Government Inspector. Fans of his performances will find continuity with the man in person: he can switch from earnest to baffled to cynical, often in a single rapid sentence. “I think they were looking for someone different, and I think I’m definitely that. But because I had been on the show as a contestant, it was a different flavour to what the show usually brings. It’s really hard work, presenting.”

What, working with normal people? “Well, there’s that,” he says, “but also just being the person keeping it all afloat. And there are people’s emotions that you have to deal with. These people are here because they are so passionate about what they are doing. They want to win. So at any point when they might be failing, or not doing as well as they hoped, or made mistakes, they’ve got me to go in and say ‘so, what was your childhood like?’

“They might have five minutes left and will not be able to finish the garment [they’re making]. And I have to ask them where it went wrong. They start talking and burst into tears. It’s a completely different thing from what I’m used to, which is turning up and saying some words.”

Smith-Bynoe was already cutting an unusual path. He grew up in East Ham, the only child of a father Fitzburn who drove – “everything: cars, buses, trains” as well as being a semi-pro cricketer, and a mother, Jen, who worked for the NHS, in the London Ambulance Service. Fitzburn died in 2018 but he is still close to his mother. He briefly interrupts the meal to order something for her on Amazon, and they have gone on several trips to Barbados. He went to Forest Gate School in east London, where he quickly discovered a knack for taking the mickey.

“I spent most of my time mimicking teachers, clocking on to what people found funny and doing more of that. I’d go home from school, do my homework and work on my set for the next day.” He went to drama school and joined improv groups. “I never thought I’d be on TV really. I knew I wanted to be on The Bill, and that finished the year I left drama school, deliberately to spite me.”

In his late teens he enjoyed a brief moment of fame for a very funny novelty grime song, Junior Spesh, which celebrated a £1.50 deal at a chicken shop in Canning Town. I say I remember seeing him perform the song in a living room in Chalk Farm in around 2008, and not being sure I was quite getting the joke.

“It’s so weird, it feels like a different life,” he says. “We thought it was funny for us. Other people said it was a parody and we were like ‘we weren’t making a parody, we were just making a song about the chicken and chip shop.’ People said we were taking the mick out of how aggressive grime artists were by making a grime song about something trivial. But we just found it funny that you could get three kinds of mayonnaise.”

Bit parts in TV started to flow, before a break in the form of Stath Lets Flats, Jamie Demetriou’s Bafta-winning comedy about a hapless suburban lettings agency. Smith-Bynoe played the straight-talking Dean, one of Stath’s colleagues, endlessly frustrated by the stupidity of the people around him.

Smith-Bynoe says he is conscious of being from a different background to many of his colleagues. “My mum always reminded me when I was growing up that I have to work harder than the average person, because I come from less of a position of privilege. And I’ve always done that.”

He deployed a chalk and cheese dynamic to great effect in BBC’s Ghosts, his biggest hit to date. He starred opposite the Fresh Meat star Charlotte Ritchie – a privately educated southwest Londoner – as a couple who inherit a house full of ghosts from earlier eras. These include a caveman, Romantic poet, Second World War officer – the catch being, only she can see and talk to them. The series ran from 2019-2023 and was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, so much so that it has spawned its own Canadian-made spinoff, which has been an even bigger success.

“They have their own version which is the most watched comedy in America, and they’re all millionaires, and I’m really happy for them,” Smith-Bynoe deadpans. So no Ghostly back-end for the British stars? “Not a jot,” he says. “The creators [make money]. Charlotte and I just get asked about it, and I sometimes pretend to have seen it.”

Even if it didn’t leave Smith-Bynoe with a retirement pot, Ghosts is a great homegrown success, a rare sitcom happy to be that most old-fashioned of things: funny.

“It’s a shame,” he says. “We’re seeing all comedies become comedy dramas. When you pitch things, people are like ‘where’s the emotional heart?’ And I’m like ‘can’t we let that come after the jokes.’ When Stath was pitched it wasn’t a story about his relationship with his dad, it was about this guy’s outlook on life.

“I feel like Fleabag was such a huge success, people have gone ‘we need to make that, that’s what gets awards.’

“I hope people are going to keep making straight-up comedies. I don’t want to change the shows I’m pitching to add an emotional through-line about someone’s mum dying just because the channel says so. I want to make comedies.”

The note of frustration is that his own sketch show, Red Flag, one of Channel 4’s ‘comedy blap’ shorts, did not get picked up for a full series. “It’s the most annoying thing,” he says. “I loved it, I worked so hard on it. It came out, won an award, and nobody wanted it.”

You can never tell what’s going to resonate. Compare his efforts on Red Flag to a throwaway tweet in April 2022, in which he coined the term “platty joobs”. Does he regret what he voiced on the world?

“Look, I like to get them talking,” he says. He remembers criticism from a few keen royalists. People said ‘this is disgraceful, [the platinum jubilee] is only happening once in our lifetime, and it’s being minimised to a ridiculous phrase by the kinds of people who would say ‘holibobs’.”

Still, Smith-Bynoe has plenty on his plate, between The Government Inspector and an upcoming comedy tour. “The thing I want most is to show my range. I need to remember what the plan was and try to stick to that. Hopefully those dramas will come and someone will stick me on a horse.”

In the meantime there is needle, thread and pattern to contend with. Despite appearing as a contestant, and a full series of presenting, he says he has yet to pick up any of the Sewing Bee skills. “I haven’t learned a damned thing,” he says. “I don’t know anything about sewing. People have been asking me if I can ‘hem a trouser’. Absolutely not. But I know the words.”

The Great British Sewing Bee begins on Tuesday May 21, on BBC One

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