A comedian bringing legal action against a production company founded by Steve Coogan has claimed producers “obviously copied” elements of a sitcom he created, the High Court has heard.
Joshua Rinkoff, also known as Harry Deansway, claims Baby Cow Productions infringed his copyright by using elements of his sitcom Shambles in its 2022 series Live At The Moth Club (LATMC).
Mr Rinkoff, who created, wrote and directed two series of Shambles which were released in 2013 and 2015, said producers working on LATMC “would have seen some or all” of his show and “obviously copied both the format and distinctive elements” of the sitcom.
However, lawyers for Baby Cow Productions deny copying the content of Shambles and said there are “no substantial similarities between the two shows that would lead one, in context, to believe one has been copied from the other”.
At a hearing in London on Monday, Tim Sampson, on behalf of Mr Rinkoff, said in written submissions that Shambles was “freely available” to watch online and had been “shared widely on social media by individuals connected to the comedy scene”, including producers and writers associated with LATMC.
Dr Sampson said there were “numerous high-level similarities” between the two shows, such as both being set in a real comedy club, interspersing genuine live comedy acts and the use of fly-on-the-wall documentary style, that “simply could not all have arisen by coincidence”.
The barrister said that though the plotlines of two episodes, LATMC’s Don’t Go In There and Shambles’ High Spirits, were “not identical” they were “clearly based on the same premise – a false belief that the club is haunted”.
He argued that LATMC’s writers made a “tweak” to their episode to “avoid their version being a direct copy”.
Jonathan Hill, on behalf of Baby Cow Productions – which Coogan co-founded in the 1990s – said in written submissions that writers who were brought in to work on LATMC were “unaware of Shambles”.
He continued: “LATMC is a mockumentary, not a sitcom, and one of its key features is that it presents substantial passages of actual stand-up, which Shambles does not.”
Mr Hill later said the “similar real-life settings” and the “unsurprising features of showing comedy club personnel” are “all the series have in common”.
He added: “As can be immediately seen by watching the shows, the two are very different and, leaving aside the defendant’s evidence that Shambles was not copied or referred to when making LATMC, it is deeply implausible that LATMC was in any way copied from Shambles”.
The hearing in front of Recorder Amanda Michaels, is due to conclude on Tuesday with a decision expected in writing at a later date.
