Caroline Catz

I Want My Wife Back will need to do better

In the end, though, this was a comedy that was mainly stuck in neutral. It would really need to shift up a gear or three to make me want to watch a second series.

I Want My Wife Back is a truly unfortunate title, in that it not only reveals a tin ear for titling of programmes but will let snarky reviewers change the W to an L. And, yes, I wouldn't mind that half-hour back.

Everyone, I imagine, likes Ben Miller (the non-smug Alexander Armstrong) but not even he, nor Caroline Catz, could quite save this derivative sitcom, not while the likes of Camping and Fresh Meat exist. A love-rat boss? A surprise party gone wrong... surprised? A pleasant middle-class English chap caught out lying by an insistent pedant, his lies getting more outre and unmanageable by the minute? Well, I laughed until I stopped, which was frightfully quickly.

Unfortunately for the channel, I Want My Wife Back is one of the worst sitcoms I've seen in a very long time and I wouldn't be surprised if it ended its run in a less prominent timeslot. The series follows the exploits of Murray (Ben Miller) a banker whose promotion at work means that he's never at home to be by the side of his wife Bex (Caroline Catz). I then didn't blame her one iota when she decided to leave him on her fortieth birthday after he'd blown off yet another date in favour of work. However this is a sitcom in which Murray is meant to be the sympathetic romantic and so writers and creators Mark Bussell and Justin Sbrensi try their best to make us root for him as he runs round trying to find out if Bex has left him. I Want My Wife Back feels like it was based on a singular idea about what would happen if a man discovered his significant other was leaving him on the day he was planning a surprise birthday for her. But basing a series around one single event isn't a good idea and especially in the case of this sitcom where the central gag runs out of steam pretty quickly. As the majority of the focus is on Murray and Bex, the rest of the characters are simply thinly-drawn stereotypes who don't feel realistic at all. A case in point is Emma (Susannah Fielding), a co-worker of Murray who is clearly in love with him even though she could do a lot better. Similarly the main gag involving Murray's boss Curtis (Stewart Wright) is that he's having an affair and often gets our hero to lie for him so he can continue his philandering ways. Every joke in I Want My Wife Back failed to hit the spot including the episode's big set piece in which Murray has his ear bitten off while looking for Bex at the hospital in which she works. The conclusion of the first episode, in which Murray and Bex are whisked off to spend a holiday in Turkey together, was as an unfunny as what had gone before and after spending half an hour with these characters I had no desire to continue. I do feel it's a shame that the comedies that seem to get the most amount promotion tend to be disappointingly unfunny whilst the real gems such as Detectorists and Fresh Meat get hidden away. I do think that we can do comedy well in this country when given the chance but I Want My Wife Back was cringe-inducing from beginning to end and featured both a miscast leading man and a complete lack of anything even resembling a joke.

New midlife crisis-based farce, full of cliches but nevertheless entertaining thanks to a fine cast including Ben Miller and Caroline Catz. Workaholic Murray (Miller) has neglected his wife Bex (Catz) for too long so she decides to leave him just as he's planning her surprise 40th. His secretary is, of course, hopelessly in love with him and he's oblivious. The couple, meanwhile, are forced to keep up appearances as their marriage crumbles, which makes for an interesting opener.

Ben Miller and Caroline Catz interview

Ben Miller and Caroline Catz talk about their new romantic comedy series.

ITV welcomes back everybody's favourite grumpy GP Doc Martin for a seventh series. The big difference in this first episode is the fact that Martin (Martin Clunes) is without his wife Louisa (Caroline Catz) who is currently living in Spain with their son. It's clear that Martin isn't coping well with this temporary separation as he isn't sleeping at all and hasn't even agreed to see a therapist. However the mostly idiotic population of Portwenn are causing him to miss various appointments due to the fact that none of them can seemingly make a good decision. This episode's patient of the week was decorator and lifeboat volunteer Steve (Daniel Ryan) who faked a urine test to garner a medical certificate from Martin. However, later he collapsed at the wheel of his lifeboat after suffering a mini-stroke causing Martin and company to come out to sea to save him. I've found that Doc Martin is a show that you have to just go with in order to enjoy as it's incredibly easy to poke holes in especially when it comes to the poorly-written supporting characters. Luckily, the series is well directed by Nigel Cole who made the lifeboat sequence the star of the show as Martin desperately tried to revive his deceitful patient. Clunes was also on form here especially as he's constantly able to make the audience sympathise with his misanthropic GP. The scenes I particularly enjoyed were the ones in which Martin was visibly trying to hold back the emotional pain that Louisa's departure had caused. I'm also looking forward to the rest of the series due to the fact that the brilliant Emily Bevan has joined the cast as Martin's straight-talking therapist Dr. Rachel Timoney. I do feel that Martin may have met his match in Rachel and I suspect that the scenes between Bevan and Clunes may provide the highlights of this series. Despite a few changes, Doc Martin is pretty much offering the same combination of lovely exterior shots, quirky supporting characters and a brilliant central turn that has kept a loyal audience tuned in for six years. However it does seem that this audience is slowly diminishing so I do wonder if this might be the end for Doc Martin especially if the viewing figures continue to dwindle.

Caroline Catz: Every town needs a Doc Martin

As the hugely popular series returns to our screens, Caroline Catz - who plays the Doc's long-suffering wife - talks about what it's like to be half of TV's most-loved on-off couple.

Caroline Catz donates Doc Martin wedding dress

A wedding dress worn in hit TV series Doc Martin is to be auctioned to raise money for a southeast Cornwall children's charity.

Doc Martin review

The quickest way to kill off a comedy is to throw a wedding. So we could only hope Doc Martin's nuptials would come a cropper before Martin Clunes and Caroline Catz reached the altar.