Peter Kay comedy series to air first on iPlayer

The comedian Peter Kay will star in the first BBC series to be shown in its entirety on the catch-up service iPlayer before hitting television screens.

The Bolton-born comic, right, will play a supermarket worker, John, who is thrown together with a female colleague in a company car-share scheme. The six-episode series, called Car Share, is the first Kay sitcom for BBC1. Kay, 39, said: “The idea of two people car sharing each day really appealed to me, as it highlights the comedy in the minutiae of the daily trek and allows the spiralling conversations of life to unwind.”

The BBC said it had commissioned the first original dramas, a series of six short films, specifically for iPlayer.