Thomas William Basden is an English actor and comedy writer, and a member of the British four-man sketch group Cowards. He has written and performed extensively for comedy shows on the BBC and Channel 4 and often collaborates in two-man shows with fellow Cowards member Tim Key.
Basden's one man show at the 2007 Edinburgh Festival FringeTom Basden Won't Say Anything won the if.comedy award for Best Newcomer. He also starred with Tim Key in the 2007 short film The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island, which won the UK Film Council Kodak Award for Best British Short Film. Basden replaced Tim Minchin as the resident musician for the second series of Mark Watson Makes the World Substantially Better where he appears along with Tim Key and Mark Watson. He was a guest panellist on the BBC Two programme Never Mind The Buzzcocks on Wednesday, 4 November 2009. Basden was one of the writers of successful sitcom Fresh Meat, which earned him a nomination for the 2012 BAFTA Craft Awards Break-Through Talent Award. In 2011 he wrote There Is a War, starring himself and Phoebe Fox, for the National Theatre's Double Feature, and in the next year he appeared as musical side-kick to Key in his Radio 4 programme Tim Key's Late Night Poetry. Since the spring of 2013, Basden has co-written and appeared in the ancient Rome based ITV sitcom Plebs with Tom Rosenthal, Joel Fry, and Ryan Sampson. Basden featured in the six-part BBC Two comedy thriller, The Wrong Mans, as Noel. The show was written by, and starred, Mathew Baynton and James Corden. The premiere was on 24 September 2013. It consisted of six thirty-minute episodes, and Basden co-wrote the third and fifth episode. Basden wrote the script for the sequel to The Wrong Mans, with the same title, which was first broadcast on BBC Two on 22 and 23 December 2014. It consisted of two hour-long episodes, and Basden acted in it as well, reprising the role of Noel. Currently, Basden stars as Matt in the Netflixblack comedy series, After Life.
Stage
In 2010 his play Party was performed, about a group of rather childish university students holding a meeting to found their own political party. The Guardian gave it a positive review calling it "an idiosyncratic and highly enjoyable piece performed beautifully by a crack cast of upcoming comics"; they praised the quality of the jokes, while noting that the satire was light and subtle. It was adapted into a Radio 4 sitcom, also called Party, broadcast for three series and a Christmas special from 2010 to 2018 and written by and starring Basden. It also stars Tim Key, Jonny Sweet, Anna Crilly and Katy Wix. He was longlisted for the 2011 Evening Standard Theatre Awards Most Promising Playwright for his stage adaption of Franz Kafka's novel The Trial, called Joseph K. It also received positive reviews from The Guardian and the Daily Telegraph.
