Jamie Demetriou on Netflix Sketch Special ‘A Whole Lifetime’ and the Future of ‘Stath Lets Flats’

Jamie Demetriou has been on a comedic rise for several years.

In the U.K., he’s arguably best known as the creator and star of Channel 4 sitcom Stath Lets Flats, in which his inept, awkward, rude and delusional Greek-Cypriot rental agent Stath Charalambos — considered one of the best comic creations since Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge — has won him countless fans inside the industry and out (in 2020 he won three BAFTA TV awards).

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Over in the U.S. — where the show airs on HBO — he’s probably more recognizable for a growing number of short but often scene-stealing TV and film appearances, including in Fleabag (the guy with big teeth in season 1), Paddington 2 (one of the bear’s fellow prison inmates known as The Professor), The Great (playing Doctor Chekhov) and Eurovision: The Story of Fire Saga (camp artistic director Kevin Swain). He’s also due to appear in Greta Gerwig’s all-star hotly-anticipated Barbie, but before that he’s taking his own brand of silly and strange comedy to the next level with the Netflix special A Whole Lifetime With Jamie Demetriou. 

Described by Demetriou himself as “birth to death in songs and sketches” and also Netflix’s “first British sketch special slash show,” the hour-long special takes audiences through a series of sketches incorporating childhood, adulthood and beyond, often accompanied by song. There are a couple of teens in bed glued to their phones who can’t be bothered to try having sex (much to the disdain of their parents), an emotional and highly volatile organizer of a bachelor party, a parent who wants to strangle his friends and their kids over a skin-crawlingly polite BBQ, a Love Island parody called Kiss Villa, which unscripted commissioners are probably already considering, all the way up to a man on his deathbed saying goodbye to his body. Anyone who has watched Stath Lets Flats will notice that he’s brought the entire cast — plus a who’s who of the U.K. comedy circuit — along for the ride (with the notable exception of his sister, What We Do in the Shadows star Natasia Demetriou, who was apparently shooting in Toronto at the time).

As A Whole Lifetime With Jamie Demetriou lands on Netflix on Tuesday, The Hollywood Reporter caught up with the fast-rising star to discuss the return of the once-beloved sketch show (and where it has been), how Netflix had no qualms about some of his wilder ideas and whether Stath will return for a fourth season. We also tried  — badly — to prize any info we could from him about Barbie.

Most comics start with a sketch show and then focus on a particular character. But you’ve sort of gone the other way around. What was it that made you want to go from Stath to this?

I think sheepishly I just think I never really got rid of wanting to do different characters. It’s an itch that’s been waiting to get scratched for a long time. I think you just never lose the kind of things that you wanted or loved as a teenager. They stay with you forever. Music, films, anything that was hot on your priority list at that time remains the case forever. When I started enjoying the idea of maybe trying to do comedy one day, I really got that routed in my mind that, if I were lucky enough, which I doubted I would be, that that was the way to go. Now doing this for a living and watching it in a different way, it just looks like a playground, like a very open environment to experiment with characters. And I was envious of that opportunity. And coincidentally, Netflix came to me with this offer.

So Netflix actually approached you first? 

The department in charge of sketch approached me and we had a meeting, and they said would you be up for doing something and invited me to pitch. 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.

In this you’ve got grown men pooping themselves, characters trying to strangle children and a dead body being tossed about in a bag. Did Netflix come back to you with any notes or concerns or were they like, “Yeah, all good”?

Weirdly, the latter. In my head, I was going, ‘Surely there was something.’ But they were very laid back about it. There was a lot of free rein. It helps that those three examples you gave are just things I do all the time.

You know, ultimately, what this is is a sketch show, first and foremost. But it’s funny watching things back you find themes in them that maybe weren’t intended. And something I’m happy with is that it feels like it’s finding the comedy in things that might feel a bit existentially difficult at times. 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.

As soon as I saw the royal wedding sketch, I immediately recalled a TV interview with a woman — I think at the last royal wedding — who said it was the happiest day of her life, and then noted that she had children. 

I can kind of empathize with that position, It feels good to get on board! Whenever I’m feeling cynical or not going with the tide, and I see people celebrating on TV and I scoff or something. There’s always a little part of me that’s like, well you’re not having any fun.

Maybe I’m not looking in the right places, but this is the first sketch show I’ve seen in a while. Growing up in the U.K. there was The Fast Show, Big Train and Smack The Pony, but it seems like the humble sketch show has fallen from grace over the last couple of decades. Is that something you’ve seen?

Yeah. You know, the comedy industry in the U.K. is quite a small place, and lines such as “sketch is dead” get thrown around a lot. And I think it’s been said enough that people have started to believe it. But I actually don’t really see any proof of that. I think that what probably happened is that the rise of hour-long film-like TV shows —  Sopranos kicking a lot of that off — rose to the top of the pile of what people wanted, and the furthest opposite of those things are sketch shows. But there have been great ones that have poked through over the years. Tim Robinson has one on Netflix called I Think You Should Leave, which I love. So they poke through, but I think you’re right — the culture doesn’t necessarily welcome them anymore.

What’s next for Stath? Is he coming back for season four?

It’s less undecided and more just that I’m waiting for the right idea to strike. I really really hate the idea of sort of it being finished, fact. Because life is long, and I feel like those characters have a lot more to do. 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. I’m keen to make sure that’s sacred. It doesn’t also help that I literally blew everything up at the end of the series. Everything’s in tatters.

Stath is such an awesome comic character, there has to be more of his down the line. Would you consider a spin-off feature or something outside of the series?

I’d potentially do a special. That’s something that’s been pinging around. I thought of a Greek Easter special. But that’s further down the line. Never say never seems like a bit of a palm off and maybe it is, but it really is the way I feel. 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. Alan Partridge is doing some of his best stuff these days and that is a testament to the needed rest that he gets.

A few years ago a U.S. remake of Stath Lets Flats was announced with Fox. We haven’t heard much since. How’s that coming along?

It’s a long process. We’re still in talks about it. It’s very complicated getting it right to make sure it feels like its own thing. We’re still very much in talks about it, it’s just taking longer than we thought.

I noticed on IMDb that you’re in this year’s much-anticipated Barbie. 

I am but a speck. I’m a small part, but it was an unbelievably joyful experience. And the NDA was very real.

Please tell me the speck wears some sort of amazing DayGlo like we’ve seen in the clips.

The speck signed an NDA! I can definitely say that Greta is an extraordinary presence. And it was a privilege to watch.

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