Catherine Tate

David Walliams and Catherine Tate film new sketch

What a kerfuffle! David Walliams brings back his Little Britain character Lou to film a Comic Relief sketch with Stephen Hawking and Catherine Tate.

Bad Education series 2 DVD review

School-based comedy series have a somewhat hit and miss reputation as anyone who has seen Teachers or the more recent David Walliams/Catherine Tate sitcom Big School will agree. But while not exactly disproving this rule, BBC Three's relentlessly hip sitcom Bad Education is well worth skipping homework for.

Radio Times review

Sharing is not a concept the teaching staff understand at Greybridge School. So Trevor's not happy when caretaker Gareth, who's sleeping in the classrooms, moves in with him - and then makes moves on his mother Rita (Michele Dotrice). It changes Gareth so much - "The voices in my head have gone, I'm not drinking from puddles any more" - that he even thinks he's ready to be a geography teacher again.

Also sharing (although a classroom rather than a bed) is Miss Postern and Mr Church. It's not the most sparkling end to the series, although the moment Catherine Tate's nose collides with a car window is a real gem of slapstick comedy.

Radio Times review

The last time we saw young Jack Carroll he was on the Britain's Got Talent stage delivering a sharply comic routine (he was runner-up to Attraction). Here he plays Dean who has been enrolled at Greybridge School because of bullying at his last school, which makes Miss Postern very excited indeed because, as she's quick to point out, she's especially good with troubled kids and bullying is her specialist subject.

It leads to Catherine Tate doing a very good impression of a stroppy teen being ousted from the classroom, while Last of the Summer Wine fans will also enjoy a sequence that's faintly reminiscent of the famous runaway bathtub scene.

Big School, series 2

Big School is a British Sitcom that began last year and was highly successful and incredibly popular. It has a common set up, being set in a regular secondary school, but the two main roles are filled by the nation's sweethearts, and comedy legends, Catherine Tate and David Walliams. The double act is striking because it blends two of the biggest comic actors from when I was very young, and I wouldn't necessarily have thought they could work so well together. But, God, do they.

Radio Times review

Greybridge School's embarrassing Parent Teacher Consultation Night is something all the staff would like cancelled... especially as it's held on the same night as Bake Off. Even head teacher Ms Baron (Frances de la Tour) hates the occasion, although her hilarious description of what she'd rather do is too disgusting to repeat here.

However, PE teacher Mr Gunn (Philip Glenister) is anxious about it for a very personal reason. He believes he is the father of a boy he teaches at the school. "Oooh, it's better than an episode of Waterloo Road," squeaks the comely Miss Postern (Catherine Tate) when he confides in her. She's right - it's much, much better than that.

Catherine Tate leads cast of Assassins

Catherine Tate will lead the cast of Jamie Lloyd's Assassins which opens at the Menier Chocolate Factory on 21 November 2014.

This David Walliams vehicle - devised by the Dawson Bros and the man himself - is now on its second series, a mysterious feat for a school-based sitcom loaded with toilet jokes and rubbish innuendo. Rather than embracing its student contingent (see: Bad Education), far too much time is dedicated to the teachers. This week, hapless French pedagogue Miss Postern (Catherine Tate) is out to woo a new colleague, whose disability is played out for some predictably un-PC laughs. Big but not very clever.

Radio Times review

Mr Church and Mr Gunn are locked in their ridiculous competition to win the affections of needy, passive-aggressive school siren Miss Postern. It's her birthday but no one cares, apart from the frenzied Church.

As the second series of David Walliams's school-set sitcom hits its stride, there are more daft gags, but Big School manages not to be sent for detention because of the great cast - Philip Glenister, Catherine Tate, Walliams himself - who throw everything into it.

Some of the jokes go on too long, including a laboured bit of business involving a hunky, blind new geography teacher, and the whole thing is often breathtakingly coarse (a running joke about gay sex, for instance). But Frances de la Tour as the lubricious head steals every scene and it's always good to see Steve Speirs doing his mournful Welsh thing, here as the useless caretaker.

Radio Times review

The first series of David Walliams's classroom sitcom launched to high hopes and high ratings. That might be because so many of us still have our fingers crossed that either Walliams or Matt Lucas will at some point recall, in a small way, the comic heights they reached in Little Britain.

Ratings slipped as people realised Big School wasn't the moment we could uncross our fingers, but is instead an old-fashioned, likeable enough, broadish sort of comedy full of familiar joke-teacher figures (the macho gym master, the intimidating head) and the odd good gag.

As a new term starts, Mr Church (Walliams) still holds a candle for Miss Postern (Catherine Tate) and at assembly, Frances de la Tour delivers a welcome speech: "As your headmistress, I offer you one word of friendly advice: cross me and I will destroy you."