When Stephen Merchant got the news that his show, The Outlaws, was being commissioned for a third series, he led with one bold idea – someone shows up with a dead body.The group of misfits in Stephen’s creation have already been involved in their fair share of crime, but Stephen says these “ordinary” people dealing with murder is a whole other ball game. “I love a TV show when someone shows up with a dead body,” admits Stephen. “So that was the one thing I had when we started this.
I said to the writers, ‘Someone’s going to show up with a body – I don’t know who, or why, but it has to happen.’” The first and second series saw Greg (Stephen), Rani (Rhianne Barreto), Ben (Gamba Cole), John (Darren Boyd), Myrna (Clare Perkins) and Lady Gabby (Eleanor Tomlinson) thrust together as they served a Community Payback sentence in Bristol.
Down on their luck, they thought things were about to change when they discovered a huge bag of cash. And it did, but for the worse as the true owner was revealed to be The Dean (Claes Bang), an extremely dangerous drug lord.The only way of getting The Dean off their backs was to get him behind bars, so the group set him up.
Six months on and The Dean is awaiting trial, but problems arise when there’s a risk the case could collapse, and then Rani returns seeking help from the gang. “Rani has a dead body in the boot of her car,” says Stephen. “And Rani sort of disappeared at the end of the last series.
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