Hot Picks: Slip

A Sliding Doors exploration of sexuality and intimacy in relationships is at the heart of this original comedy series, created and written by Zoe Lister-Jones and produced by actor Dakota Johnson’s TeaTime Pictures.

Lister-Jones, who stars in the series and also directs every episode, is well known to US audiences for her role in CBS’s Life In Pieces and for co-writing, co-directing and starring in feature comedy How It Ends for MGM. She also starred in Disappointment Blvd for A24 and previously wrote, directed and produced The Craft: Legacy.

“Zoe is a talent and a force who writes very relatable stories with multi-dimensional characters. Given the right vehicle, she can showcase all those abilities,” says Jon Rutherford, president, global rights, franchise and content strategy at co-producer and distributor Boat Rocker Studios.

“She wrote the entire series on spec and brought it to us. We were amazed at how well it read so with our support and that of producing engine TeaTime [in which Boat Rocker owns a minority stake], we felt this would do extraordinarily well globally.”

The seven-part series tells the story of Mae Cannon (Lister-Jones), a 30-something museum worker trapped in a 13-year marriage that has lost its spark. When she ‘slips’ and has a one-night stand with Eric, she wakes up the next morning in a panic, only to realise she has somehow entered a parallel universe in which she and Eric are now married.

“Her wedding photos with Eric are on the wall, her shoes are in his dresser,” says Rutherford. “She has to figure out what happened and in doing so begins to appreciate what and who she really values in her life.

“This is a hilarious and unexpected love story. A dramedy that is heartfelt, sad, funny, poignant and captivating.”

Lister-Jones wrote the series during the pandemic, when people “were looking back at our pasts and the paths we might have chosen, or not chosen, and how those choices impacted our current state of happiness and how we deal with our sort of consistent sense of insatiability in this modern world”, she says.

“That we have this much global interest from leading pay-TV players illustrates the premium nature and extensive audience reach of Slip” 

Roku boarded the project early on and will launch it in the US and Canada this autumn. Other takers include Foxtel streamer Binge in Australia and Telia platforms C More and TV4 in Scandinavia, plus Watcha (South Korea), Hot Telecom (Israel) and MTV Networks (LatAm & Caribbean).

“That we have this much global interest from leading pay-TV players illustrates the premium nature and extensive audience reach of Slip,” says Rutherford. “We firmly believe in its potential as a returning series.”

The series also features Emily Hampshire, Whitmer Thomas, Tymika Tafari and Amar Chadha-Patel.

TeaTime’s Johnson, Ro Donnelly and Katie O’Connell executive produce, alongside Ivan Schneeberg, David Fortier and Nick Nantell for Boat Rocker.