BBC2 has bought the popular and critically lauded Australian sitcom Kath and Kim, which features a lower middle class Melbourne mother and daughter trapped in suburban hell.
Kath and Kim, broadcast by Australian public service broadcaster ABC, had become the country's most popular homegrown sitcom for more than a decade.
The show satirises suburban Australians and in particular the kitsch lifestyle of a traditional working class family that has come into money.
Kath and Kim has attracted its critics in Australia, who argue that the show, which features Aussie slang and characters who regularly mispronounce words, just makes fun of working class lifestyles.
The show focuses on the lives of fortysomething keep fit addict Kath Day-Knight and her twentysomething daughter Kim Craig.
Kath lives with her "hunk of spunk" boyfriend Kel, but at the start of the first series their style is being seriously cramped by Kim, who has moved back into her mum's home after splitting up with husband Brett.
The BBC head of comedy entertainment, Jon Plowman, told a media conference in Sydney that he thought Kath and Kim, which is already broadcast in the UK on pay-TV channel Living TV, would work for British audiences.
"It is a big, broad comedy and it is different. Comedy continually has to find new jokes, find new characters and funny settings, find new things to say and therefore I think Kath and Kim will do well because it is not like anything else we are making at the moment," he said.
"I have faith that if people are prepared and happy to watch Dead Ringers in Australia, the British public would be happy to watch Kath and Kim in the UK," he added.
Kath and Kim was created by Jane Turner and Gina Riley, who also play the two lead characters.
The sitcom evolved from a mid-90s ABC sketch show, Big Girl's Blouse, in which the Kath and Kim characters first appeared, inspired by docu-soaps such as Sylvania Waters.
Kath and Kim was first broadcast in Australia by ABC in 2002 and Turner and Riley are currently working on a third series.
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