Photo from the pilot of Damned, screened two years ago, starring Alan Davies, Kevin Eldon and Jo Brand star in the social work-themed show

A sitcom penned by Jo Brand about life in a children’s social services department has been picked up by Channel 4 for a six-part series.

A one-off pilot of ‘Damned’, which sees Brand star alongside Alan Davies as social workers, was screened on Sky two years ago. Channel 4 has now committed to six episodes of the comedy.

The programme will focus on social workers “swimming against a tide of bureaucracy and pedantry, and contending with the absurdities and nationalities of life in a county council office”, Channel 4 said.

Brand, whose mother was a social worker, has previous form in taking a comic look at public services with her Bafta-award winning comedy Getting On set in an NHS hospital.

Speaking about ‘Damned’, Brand said being a social worker was “like being a traffic warden without the perks”.

“As the daughter of a social worker who worked for many years in child protection, I grew up seeing social workers go unrecognised for the good things they did and castigated for the bad,” she said.

“Damned is an attempt to portray the tragi-comic lives of social workers – always under pressure, always in possession of a grim sense of humour and always wrong in the eyes of the public.”

The series will start filming next month.