London, UK – 14 Sept, 2026: a new British sitcom has reached an audience without a broadcaster, a commissioning editor or a paid media campaign behind it. No Big Deal, believed to be the world’s first sitcom written by a human and produced entirely using AI, has put its pilot episode out free on YouTube, where it can be watched here.
The comedy is written and created by Andrew Dickinson and produced by ModeLabs.ai, a UK AI studio. It is set in the world of venture capital, at an investment firm called Janus, where the staff chase the next billion-pound business idea, usually with disastrous results.
The pitches reaching the Janus table include fart-proof underwear, clinical toilets and questionable items of sex furniture, and every promising investment ends in comic disaster. Derek Tudor is the brilliant but unpredictable investor who cannot keep his thoughts to himself, Lydia de Mabro the firm’s de facto leader after its only successful investment earned her a board seat, John Stevens the well-meaning but spectacularly underqualified founder who inherited the money to start the business, and Perry Kent the experienced investment banker treating Janus as a stepping stone to a US Green Card.
A story sourced from the writer’s own desk
Dickinson worked as an angel investor and investment manager before the material became a script.
“I wrote No Big Deal during my time as an angel investor and investment manager. Every storyline began with a real incident that has been exaggerated and expanded for comic effect. I also wrote all of the original music used throughout the series, which was performed and recorded with the help of my good friend and outstanding musician Andy Pike.”
The route to production was decided by cost.
“I originally planned to make the pilot through traditional television production, but it quickly became clear that the process would be slow and prohibitively expensive. When I met the team at ModeLabs, I realised AI offered an entirely new way to bring the project to life.”
Meeting the AI question head on
Dan Hawthorne of ModeLabs.ai compared the reaction to earlier arguments about visual effects.
“Nobody questions whether the CGI in a Marvel film is ‘cheating’. People judge entertainment by how it makes them feel, not by the tools used to create it.
“No Big Deal is brilliantly written and genuinely funny. AI isn’t the punchline – it’s simply the production technology that made an ambitious independent comedy possible.”
Dickinson has been equally direct about the labour involved.
“Making the Pilot wasn’t simply a case of pressing a button. Every shot, camera movement, performance, line reading, location and visual detail had to be carefully planned, refined and recreated through an iterative creative process between the writing and production teams. Even while we were making it, the script was rewritten more than 65 times.
“I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve created together. I still laugh at these characters, and I hope audiences will too.”
The pilot episode of No Big Deal is available to watch now, free on YouTube, here.
Accounts for the show run on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X and Reddit.
