TV
If you are the kind of person who doesn't watch E4 because you think it is a bit too youthy, then make an exception for GameFace, the new series written by and starring Roisin Conaty.
It is very much about a woman of a certain age - definitely no longer youthy – trying to curb her chaotic excesses with little success. Marcella (Conaty) is a struggling actor, making ends meet as a children's entertainer (not easy when you are hungover, as she often is) and in various dead-end temp jobs (also not easy when you are hungover).
W1A returns and hits the ground running. The BBC is up for charter renewal and so these are tense times for the corporation and it needs people like Head of Values Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) to steady the ship, stop it from hitting an iceberg and/or sinking etc, etc.
It must be exciting to be Rob Beckett at the moment. The BBC has recently announced that he is to star in not one but two primetime entertainment shows. And before that he stars in this sitcom pilot, which he also co-wrote with Shaun Pye.
Pranking went on long before the internet and even TV were invented, but now in the post-Jackass world it has moved on to new levels. And Comedy Central in the UK is currently after a piece of the action.
There have been some interesting comments about new comedy White Gold, which started earlier this week. People who didn’t like it pointed to the fact that there was nobody nice in it. Nobody you could actually like. Which is not how English sitcoms are supposed to be. They are supposed to be full of loveable losers.
Do people still make gazillions overnight out of internet start-ups? They certainly seem to if Loaded is anything to go by. Things happen even faster than overnight here. One moment cautious Josh (Jim Howick) is overdrawn and addicted to probiotic yoghurt, the next he has piles of money to burn. And probably still likes the odd Yakult.
This gentle series starring Miriam Margolyes and Frog Stone reaches its penultimate episode. It is a shame that there are only four parts because it is only just starting to bed in, albeit very slowly. Are Mim (Margolyes) and her daughter Fran (Stone) going to bond in the end? I should imagine so, but things are still a little strained here.
If you want simple sitcom laughs you can't go far wrong with Hospital People. This new comedy starring Tom Binns in a variety of wigs and outfits doesn’t miss a trick, whether it is daft visual gags, clever verbal gags or just plain stupid innuendo. It’s not groundbreaking and it is about as far as you can get from, to pluck a comedy at random, Inside No 9, but if you’ve had a hard day flopping down in front of this could be just what the senior registrar ordered.
And so it’s finally time to say goodbye to Andy and Errol in the last episode of the last series of Uncle. Sob. Reviewers have been asked not to reveal spoilers so I’m going to fight every journalistic fibre in my body and resist the urge to splurge.
Josh Widdicombe recently cropped up in a BBC documentary about sitcoms saying how much he loved the genre. And he clearly adores the classics because the second series of his flatshare sitcom seems to be channelling a number of milestone comedies from the past four decades.
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