London, UK – 14 Sept, 2026: a sitcom pilot that went up on YouTube was assembled with AI tools from end to end, and its makers believe nothing quite like it has been done before, a sitcom written by a human and produced entirely using AI. No Big Deal comes from writer Andrew Dickinson and the UK AI studio ModeLabs.ai, and the episode can be watched here.
Not a one-click job
For anyone following generative video tools, the useful part of this is what the work actually involved. Dickinson is blunt that the pilot was not made by handing a script to a model and collecting the output at the other end.
“Making the Pilot wasn’t simply a case of pressing a button. Every shot, camera movement, performance, line reading, location and visual detail had to be carefully planned, refined and recreated through an iterative creative process between the writing and production teams. Even while we were making it, the script was rewritten more than 65 times.”
That figure covers rewrites made while the episode was already in production, not a tidy run of drafts beforehand. Shots that did not land sent the writing back to the page, and the page sent fresh shots back into production.
The tooling argument
ModeLabs.ai has been making the case that AI belongs in the credits in the same way as any other production technology. Dan Hawthorne, of the studio, reached for a comparison with visual effects.
“Nobody questions whether the CGI in a Marvel film is ‘cheating’. People judge entertainment by how it makes them feel, not by the tools used to create it.”
Inside Janus
The comedy itself is set at Janus, a venture capital firm chasing the next billion-pound business idea. Derek Tudor is brilliant, unpredictable and unable to keep his thoughts to himself. Lydia de Mabro runs the place in practice, after the firm’s only successful investment earned her a board seat. Perry Kent, an experienced investment banker, is using Janus as a stepping stone to a US Green Card, while John Stevens is a well-meaning but spectacularly underqualified founder who inherited the money to start the business. Fart-proof underwear, clinical toilets and questionable items of sex furniture all get a hearing, and every promising investment ends in comic disaster.
Dickinson worked as an angel investor and investment manager before he wrote the show, and every storyline started from something that actually happened. He also wrote all of the original music used in the series, performed and recorded with the musician Andy Pike.
“I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve created together. I still laugh at these characters, and I hope audiences will too.”
No Big Deal episode one is streaming now, free on YouTube, here.
TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X and Reddit carry the series too, alongside its YouTube channel.
