Set and filmed during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, primarily using video-conferencing technology, the series stars actors Michael Sheen and David Tennant as fictionalised versions of themselves.

In the first series, Michael Sheen and David Tennant play fictionalised versions of themselves, trying to rehearse a performance of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author during lockdown via videoconference,[2] while the underconfident director, Simon, struggles to keep control of the production.

[7] A New Year Special was uploaded to BritBox YouTube page on 31 December 2021, with Michael, David, Simon, Georgia, Anna & Lucy all reprising their roles.

Louis Chilton, in a four-starred review for The Independent, described Staged as "a welcome distraction, an eminently watchable portrait of two artists as petulant, egotistical children".

Rupert Hawksley of The Independent called the first episode "stale and indulgent [...] Perhaps Staged was always this smug and we just didn’t notice, so grateful were we to have something new to watch, but the tone is now horribly out of step with the national mood."