News · 4 October 2026
Lenny Rush Leads New BBC Comedy The Reluctant Vampire Starting Tonight
A new BBC comedy based on a story by Eric Morecambe arrives tonight, with Lenny Rush leading a cast packed with some of Britain’s best-known comedy performers.
The Reluctant Vampire BBC series begins at 6.40pm tonight, Sunday 4 October, on BBC One, with the first episode also available through BBC iPlayer.
The BBC lists the new comedy as a six-part series, following a teenage vampire prince who discovers one rather fundamental problem with his future: he is not actually a vampire.
Lenny Rush plays vampire heir Val
Rush stars as Val, the youngest member of a traditional vampire family and heir to its throne.
Everyone around him expects Val to grow into the bloodthirsty role his father believes has been waiting for him since birth.
Unfortunately, being a vampire has never come naturally.
As the first episode begins, Val is approaching an important initiation ceremony and finally appears to be making progress. Then his mother reveals the secret that changes everything.
He is not a vampire at all.
The discovery leaves Val trapped between the supernatural family that raised him and a human world he has barely experienced.
Tom Davis and Sian Clifford play Val’s parents
The cast surrounding Rush is unusually strong for a family sitcom.
Tom Davis plays Val’s father Victor, a larger-than-life traditional vampire determined that his son should embrace the family way of life.
Sian Clifford plays his mother Valeeta, who already knows the truth about Val’s identity.
Gabriel Nagy appears as Val’s brother Vernon, while Asim Chaudhry plays the family’s assistant Igon.
The supernatural household becomes even stranger through Bill Bailey and Ross Noble, who play gargoyles Guy and Gary, while Joe Wilkinson appears as Wilf the Werewolf.
Eric Morecambe’s story reaches television
The series is based on The Reluctant Vampire, the children’s story created by comedy legend Eric Morecambe.
Rather than treating the vampire idea as horror, the adaptation turns it into a coming-of-age comedy about a teenager trying to work out where he belongs.
That makes Val’s supernatural problem surprisingly familiar. His family expects him to become one thing, while he gradually discovers that his own identity may be very different.
The television adaptation has been written by brothers Neil and Rob Gibbons, whose previous work includes writing extensively with Steve Coogan on Alan Partridge projects.
The Royal Television Society describes the series as part of the celebrations surrounding Eric Morecambe’s centenary, bringing one of his lesser-known creations to a completely new audience.
Lenny Rush takes another major lead role
Rush is still only 17 but has already built an unusually substantial television career.
He won the BAFTA for Male Performance in a Comedy Programme for his role as Ollie in Am I Being Unreasonable?, alongside Daisy May Cooper.
More recently, viewers have seen him in Doctor Who and Slow Horses.
In an interview ahead of tonight’s launch, Rush told The Guardian that the role of Val had effectively been developed with him in mind, after executive producer Shane Allen worked with him on Am I Being Unreasonable?.
The combination of Rush’s understated performance with Davis’s enormous vampire character appears to sit at the centre of the programme’s comedy.
When is The Reluctant Vampire on?
Episode one airs tonight at 6.40pm on BBC One and runs for 29 minutes.
New episodes will continue weekly on Sundays, with the six-part story taking Val further into the human world while he tries to conceal the truth from his family.
The currently published episode schedule runs through to 8 November, with later episodes introducing vampire hunters, family secrets and the problem of Val’s approaching initiation ceremony.
For a series arriving at the beginning of October, the timing could hardly be better.
The Reluctant Vampire brings vampires to BBC One just as Halloween season begins, but the bigger story appears to be about something much more ordinary: a teenager discovering that the life everyone has planned for him might not be the life he wants at all.
