General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Charity Shop Sue

Charity Shop Sue is a British mockumentary comedy series released on YouTube in 2019, following Sue Tuke (played by Selina Mosinski), the egomaniacal manager of a fictional charity shop called Sec*hand Chances in Bulwell, Nottingham. The independently produced series has been described as a cult hit online, and its lead character took on a life of her own as a social media personality who has since appeared on RuPaul's Drag Race, MTV Cribs, and Strictly Come Dancing.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	British mockumentary online sitcom, single camera, about 10 minutes per episode, released on YouTube³^•⁴
First broadcast	Tuesday 15 October 2019 on YouTube; final episodes 19 November 2019³
Creators	Stuart Edwards, Timothy Chesney and Matthew Chesney, who wrote and directed together; produced by Mary Kearns, Penny Linfield and Vicky McClure for Spool Films⁴
Lead	Selina Mosinski as Sue Tuke, with volunteers Vera, Viki and Kersch¹
Episode count	British Comedy Guide lists 6 episodes in one series; TheTVDB, IMDb and Moviefone list 18⁴^•³^•⁵
YouTube channel	@charityshopsue, created 24 January 2013; about 54,700 subscribers and 11.9 million views⁶
Critical standing	IMDb rating 8.7/10 from 218 users; the first episode is held in the BFI National Archive's Online Video collection⁷^•¹

Spoilers

Premise and characters

The series is framed as footage shot in 2014, when Sue Tuke invited local filmmakers into Sec*hand Chances to document her life as a self-styled local celebrity. In the fiction, Sue hoped to raise the shop's profile, get the business "on the net", prevent the store from closing, and become an online superstar; the plan went awry, Sue withdrew from filming, and the footage is presented as unseen until the 2019 release.⁴^•⁵

Sue rules the shop floor with dramatic flair, clashing with staff and customers alike; the BFI describes her as charming and funny as well as manipulative and blunt.¹ Her fictional backstory includes a stint as a fashion stylist in Paris and Milan, years as landlady of The Moon And Stars pub ended when her ex-husband robbed her of her savings, and a father remembered as the "Bulwell Market King" who could "sell anything to anyone".⁴ She works with volunteers Vera, Viki and Kersch, and her schemes, such as an "Antique Hunt" around Bulwell's landmarks that raised £35, or a "steaming certificate" invented so volunteers leave with something to show other employers, repeatedly collapse.¹^•⁸^•⁹

Creation and production

The pilot idea was conceived in 2001 by Nottingham creators Stuart Edwards, Tim Chesney and Matthew Chesney, who met on a theater course at Clarendon College.¹⁰^•² The character was designed from the start as egomaniacal, patronizing and super direct, so that the contrast of her working for a charitable cause would be fun to write; the creators drew on the Nottingham women in their families, including their grandmother, and said many stories are based on true events.²

Casting. The character was originally written as much older, but Tim Chesney pushed for Selina Mosinski to audition; Matt Chesney had worked with her in Nottingham and Stuart Edwards had studied with her at Clarendon College. From her first informal audition the creators felt she was Sue, and she added dimensions to the character they had not imagined.²

Filming began in 2014 and ceased two weeks ahead of schedule, in the fiction because releasing the footage would tarnish the shop's reputation.⁸ The series was produced by Spool Films, with BAFTA-winning Nottingham actress Vicky McClure among the producers; she and filmmaker Shane Meadows also make cameo appearances in later episodes.⁴^•¹ McClure plays an angry customer in one episode.⁷ An earlier mockumentary, Charity Shop Sue's Xmas, co-starring McClure, aired on Sky Arts over Christmas before the main series.¹⁰

Reception and afterlife

The series found its audience through clips shared out of context as memes on Twitter and YouTube, and it has been described as a cult hit.⁸^•¹ The character has been cited as an LGBTQ+ icon; the creators attribute this to the "queer code" in everything the team makes, saying the community has felt empowered by strong women who stick up for you.² Sue has appeared on RuPaul's Drag Race, MTV Cribs (filmed in Stuart Edwards's mother's house in Kirkby in Ashfield), and Strictly Come Dancing, and she DJed at the Mighty Hoopla festival.²^•¹¹ In 2024 the character released an audiobook, Charity Shop Sue's Tools for Management and Success, on Audible.¹¹

The BFI National Archive acquired the first episode for its Online Video collection, citing the series as an example of how digital platforms such as YouTube have created spaces for independent comedy to thrive.¹

Academic reading

The media scholar Alida Payson, of Cardiff University, analyzed Charity Shop Sue in a 2022 JOMEC Journal article on makeover culture and second-hand spaces under austerity, pairing it with the 2009 BBC Two reality program Mary, Queen of Charity Shops. Payson reads the series as satirizing both style makeovers and the rehabilitative job-training function of charity shops: volunteers such as Kersh, who came to the shop through the probation service, and Viki, who refuses to be remade, remain stubbornly themselves, and Sue's invented "steaming certificate" mocks the idea that shop volunteering yields a qualification.⁹

Mosinski beyond Sue

Selina Mosinski, a Nottingham character actor, has played Sue for over a decade and continued developing the character with Dead Sweet TV, the studio run with Edwards and the Chesney twins.¹² In 2026 she made her Edinburgh Fringe debut with Puss In Boots: A Working Class Fairy Tale at Pleasance, a one-woman show directed by Matt Chesney in which she plays a new character, Randy Cain, an 18-year-old stripper loosely inspired by Mosinski's own late-1990s past, with parody of third-wave feminism and ladette culture.¹³^•¹² She also appeared in Paris Lees's coming-of-age drama What It Feels Like For a Girl, set in 2000s Nottingham.¹²

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026