Caroline Quentin

Seann Walsh interview

EntertainmentWise sat down with Seann Walsh to find out what it was like to star opposite Caroline Quentin and The Inbetweeners' Blake Harrison in Big Bad World and why he would be on the dole if he wasn't a comedian...

In the second episode of the Brit comedy about a hapless graduate, things seem to be looking up when Ben (Inbetweeners alumnus Blake Harrison) lands a job at a local pub. This being the Big Bad World, however, he's on an unsalaried graduate scheme. Desperate times call for desperate measures, namely faking a job on an oil rig to win back his ex, Lucy. With James Fleet and Caroline Quentin as Ben's overbearing parents heading up a strong cast, this is a funny take on the challenges of adulthood.

Big Bad World is an incredibly traditional sitcom with a fairly obvious storyline but at the same time it does have some pretty believable characters.

Even though I didn't particularly like Ben in this episode, due to Blake Harrison's mundane performance, I can see that he's going to grow as a person.

I felt that stand-up comic Seann Walsh stole a fair few scenes as the incredibly inappropriate Eggman. However, the stars of the show were sitcom veterans Caroline Quentin and James Fleet, who were an absolute hoot as Ben's parents.

Though all of the jokes and situations were fairly obvious there was still a lot of effort made to let us get to know all of the characters. It may be a fairly predictable sitcom, but Big Bad World did make me laugh a couple of times and that's more than can be said for the majority of comedies that have aired this year.

This eight-part comedy cunningly taps into the ever-expanding demographic of the rudderless graduate, straight out of uni and forced to return to the fold. Ben, played by Blake Harrison (The Inbetweeners' Neil) is our delusional hero, struggling to find work and stifled by life in his seaside hometown.

Right now that premise isn't translating to comedy gold, but that's not to say that it won't. The opener is rescued by a surreally tacky marriage proposal and Seann Walsh as Ben's unhygienic pal. Caroline Quentin and James Fleet milk it for all it's worth as Ben's embarrassing parents.

Work, love, friends and family. The four pillars of sitcom, you could argue, and ones without which Big Bad World would collapse entirely. As it is, this Blake 'Inbetweeners' Harrison vehicle is amiable if inessential, following Ben (Harrison) as he returns to his dead-end hometown after years at university studying Norse Literature.

Only one thing has changed: while his parents (James Fleet and Caroline Quentin) smother him and his mates are locked into old routines, his ex has shacked up with a hunky-yet-sensitive copper. And guess what? He still holds a candle for her. Amid the standard-issue faux pas and idle banter come a few flashes of inspiration - notably the box-ticking job interview - but surprises are generally few and the laughs gentle.

The Inbetweeners star Blake Harrison returns to our screens this week in new eight-part comedy Big Bad World - Harrison plays Ben, a recent graduate who quickly learns that post-Uni life isn't all it's cracked up to be, as he finds himself with no job, no girlfriend and back living with his parents, played by Caroline Quentin and The Vicar of Dibley's James Fleet.

We'd definitely recommend catching Big Bad World.

Rory Bremner set for theatre debut

Impressionist Rory Bremner to star in Noel Coward's Relative Values alongside Caroline Quentin.

The seasonal return of the Little Crackers series, which features comedy shorts based on the autobiographical recollections of various actors and comedians. Previous participants have included Stephen Fry, Victoria Wood, Jack Whitehall and Sheridan Smith. This latest series begins with Joanna Lumley's Baby, Be Blonde, in which the 19-year-old Jo (Ottilie Mackintosh) is a struggling model who gets a break when she buys a blonde wig. "It didn't, but it made me feel that I had changed the course of my life," says Lumley in the behind-the-scenes film which follows the short. Also starring this week in later episodes are Rebecca Front and Caroline Quentin.

Switch is a comedy drama on a digital channel which has its work cut out. Mainly because it is on IIV2, which is quite possibly the worst TV channel in the country.

Switch is a supernatural comedy about a coven of four 20-something witches living in Camden. Each of the four witches, physiotherapist Grace (Phoebe Fox), travel loving Hannah (Hannah Tointon), fiery fashionista Jude (Nina Toussiant-White) and overworked Stella (Lacey Turner), each have their own problems - whether it is love, family relations or work - so not surprisingly they often end up using their magic to try and improve their lot, and more often than not it backfires.

In terms of laughs, it's somewhat thin on the ground. While the team behind the series have good experience with this kind of format (the show is made by the team who did Being Human), it all felt a bit thin. Part of the problem, I think, is that it's not in the right time slot. The target audience appears to be young women and girls, so why not make the show pre-watershed so that it could reach a bigger audience - and hopefully Switch would benefit from that.

The older actors, the authority figures in Switch, were the funniest - including Grace's old fashioned mother played by Caroline Quentin. There were also some good laughs from Stella's horrid boss Janet (Amanda Drew), who's placed under a spell to make her lose her short-term memory; but in the end makes her forget several decades. Good stuff.

There's one or two positive moments in Switch, but by and large it was a disappointment. That said, I think I'd recommend anyone reading this to watch Switch for two main reasons. Firstly (since just about everything else on the channel is rubbish), it's the best show currently on ITV2. By watching it, we might just encourage the executives at the network to buck up their ideas.

And secondly, as I mentioned before, the show is mostly targeted at young women. This is how Switch should be marketed. Forget the witches or merchandising. Just say that this is the show that could make Jeremy Clarkson's eyes bleed and you could well end up with a big hit.

ITV2's new comedy drama Switch follows the romantic and magical misadventures of Stella, Jude, Grace and Hannah - four twentysomething, flat sharing female witches in super-trendy Camden Lock, north London.

This self-styled Camden coven shrieks, hugs, banters and occasionally casts spells to help each other out, such as bringing an accidentally microwaved cat back to life, erasing the inconvenient short-term memory of an unpleasant employer or simply placing romantic enchantments on young men they like the look of.

All the coven needs is a makeshift cauldron, a suitable spell, objects representing the four elements, and each other. "We don't have anything for air," exclaims one of the girls at an impromptu - and extremely hurried - spell cast.

At which point I have to confess to the uncharitable thought that they could always try sticking their heads into the mixture.

Switch is okay, but it could have been so much more fun if it had featured four diverse and interesting leads, rather than the bland, boring, antiseptic and homogenous refugees from a tampon advert offered up here. The cast is fine, but the script is so thin on characterisation that hardly a single personality can be scraped together between the four of them.

They even share the same body shape, as though any deviation from the supposedly acceptable, attractive norm would send the potential young male audience fleeing in disgust and horror at the deviance of it all. Most disappointing, none of the leads is written to be remotely funny. The most the programme allows them to be is frothy or scatty, which is frankly irritating.

As if to prove the point, Caroline Quentin was introduced halfway through episode one as the overbearing, overprotective mother of youngest witch Grace. The involvement of a character with a bit more flesh, figuratively and literally, lifted the show immediately. The trailer for episode two also promised some added unpleasantness in the form of a rival coven from Kensington - all sneers and snotty attitude - who would appear to offer the interesting edge our Camden quartet is sadly lacking. So Switch might yet be worth persevering with.