Anthony MacMurray

It's not good news when a programme moves channels before it even airs but that's exactly what happened to sitcom Give Out Girls. Originally planned to be shown on Sky Living it was transferred to Comedy Central which, after watching episode one, was possibly a better fit. Set in the world of promotions Give Out Girls follows the fortunes of four ladies who work for the Hot Staff company. The only character that the sitcom really spends any time with is 29-year-old Marilyn (Kerry Howard); an unreliable schemer who tries her best to do as little work as possible. Thanks to the fantastic performance by the ever-reliable Howard, Marilyn was the only one of Give Out Girls' characters who didn't feel like a cliché. Marilyn's colleagues are the snide beautiful Kiwi Zoe (Mianda Hennessy), fun-loving Welsh girl Poppy (Cariad Lloyd) and the naive Gemma (former X-Factor contestant Diana Vickers). I'm not sure why Hatty Ashdown and Tony MacMurray thought the world of promotions was such a comic minefield because the scenes where the girls were out on the street didn't yield much laughter. In fact the majority of the jokes in Give Out Girls were incredibly tired and included a ridiculous sexual harassment charge as well as Marilyn mistaking a facial mole for an olive. As she proved in Him and Her, Kerry Howard is a fantastic comic actress and I felt she made a potential two-dimensional character into somebody vaguely realistic. Aside from Howard, only Tracey Ann-Oberman as the girls' powersuit wearing boss made an impression. Although Howard and Oberman tried their best, they couldn't save a sitcom that didn't make me laugh once. Based on the evidence in this episode, Kerry Howard deserves much better and I'm hoping her next project is a programme worthy of her considerable comic talent.