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Meadows, Ferrell and Gilshenan join the cast of ‘No Activity’ US remake

Episodic coverage of the CBS All Access series NO ACTIVITY. Pictured (l-r): Tim Meadows as Detective Tolbeck; Patrick Brammall as Detective Cullen. Photo Cr: Trae Patton/CBS © 2017 CBS Interactive. All Rights Reserved.

Tim Meadows and Patrick Brammall in the US remake of ‘No Activity’. 

Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Goldbergs star Tim Meadows is playing the co-lead opposite Patrick Brammall in the US remake of No Activity.

Darren Gilshenan, who played the similarly dim-witted cop in the Australian original produced by Jungle for Stan, has filmed a guest role as a wheelchair-bound despatch worker who gets a hard time from one of his colleagues, played by Amy Sedaris.

The guest cast also includes Will Ferrell, who plays a criminal, Mark Berry, Arturo Castro, Mackenzie Davis, Bridget Everett, Travis Guba, Jake Johnson, Sunita Mani, Jason Mantzoukas, Adrian Martinez, Jesse Plemons, Fred Pohl, Alex Rodriguez, J.K. Simmons, Courtenay Taylor, Michaela Watkins and Daniel Zolghadri.

Ferrell serves as an executive producer with Funny Or Die colleague Adam McKay. The series is directed by Trent O’Donnell, who co-created the show with Brammall.

It will debut on CBS All Access, the live streaming and SVOD service, on November 12, the same night as the last episode of Star Trek: Discovery, and day-and-date on Stan.

CBS Television Studios produced the show in association with Funny Or Die and Gary Sanchez Productions. Jungle’s Jason Burrows is an executive producer.

The plot follows two low-level cops (Brammall, Meadows) who have spent far too much time in a car together; two criminals who are largely kept in the dark; two despatch workers who haven’t really clicked; and two Mexican tunnelers who are in too small a space considering they’ve only just met.

“With No Activity as CBS All Access’ first original comedy, we’re delivering our subscribers a new, premium series that continues to push artistic boundaries in interesting ways,” said Marc DeBevoise, president/chief operating officer of CBS Interactive. “This is definitely not your average comedy.”

The idea for the Australian series originated when Brammall and Gilshenan were sitting in a car filming an episode in the second series of The Moodys, directed by O’Donnell.

In between takes they riffed about numerous subjects. O’Donnell saw the potential for a comedy and later filmed scenes with the pair in the carpark below Jungle’s offices.

The initial thought was to screen the scenes as interstitials online before Burrows, Brammall and O’Donnell parlayed the idea into a half-hour comedy which they pitched to Stan.