Celia Imrie

Celia Imrie checks in late to Hollywood ... aged 62

The star of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films says she hopes the buzz around the upcoming sequel will take her in a new direction.

Video: Dench and Imrie on Second Marigold Hotel film

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has had a Royal Gala premiere in London.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall were at the event in London's Leicester Square, alongside stars of the film.

BBC London's Brenda Emmanus spoke to Dame Judi Dench and Celia Imrie about sequel and the new additions to the cast.

If real on-screen charm was enough to make an entertaining crime caper then there's no doubt that Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson have it in spades.

Attractive French locations add a pleasant background for an undernourished script that finds Brosnan and his ex-wife Thompson joining forces to steal a precious diamond from the businessman crook who has left them flat broke.

Brosnan and Thompson, and Timothy Spall and Celia Imrie as their happy go-lucky-accomplices all give writer-director John Hopkins much more than he deserves but in the end they, and the audience, are let down.

The Love Punch is a British farce starring Pierce Brosnan, Emma Thompson, Celia Imrie and Timothy Spall, four cheerful Garden of England pensioners (Emma? You're only 55!) stealing a diamond necklace in the south of France in order to haul themselves out of impending penury. With its extreme mugging, it will feel either insultingly ridiculous or a simple amusement depending on how drunk you are.

Cinema can be perfunctory on the theme of love at the best of times, but Brosnan and Thompson play out their romance as though it were a game of charades. If they were wearing feather boas they would be winking over them until their eyelids dislocated, having the time of their lives in a champagne-and-trifle dreamworld while we loll, longing for literally anything else. A movie about Stalin? The Foreign Legion? Donald Duck?

Radio Times review

Clarence and Connie's battleaxe of a sister, Charlotte, stalks the corridors of Blandings, terrorising her siblings and braying orders at the servants, just like she used to do when she lived in India with her military-man husband. She's played by Celia Imrie with her usual deft comic touch as she adds another fearsomely posh harridan to her CV.

Charlotte thinks Blandings is a shambles and decides she's going to move in permanently. Meanwhile, Charlotte's lisping wet blanket of a ward, Millicent, is mooning over Clarence's presentable young male secretary, Carmody. A plot involving pigs, kidnappings and laxatives of course doesn't bear close scrutiny. But that's not the point of Blandings, it's just a bit of silliness. Tinkety tonk!

How posh are the cast of Blandings?

Meet Timothy Spall, Jennifer Saunders, Tim Vine and Celia Imrie, the cast of BBC1's PG Wodehouse comedy Blandings.

We learn more about the unconventional relationship between the poised, self-possessed Rowan and her married lover Tommy (Celia Imrie and Larry Lamb) as Stewart Harcourt's likeable family drama continues. Their love is tested by a family crisis, when Rowan's troubled granddaughter decides she must track down her mother. None of this runs particularly deep, but Love and Marriage rolls along nicely, and Imrie and Lamb are an engaging couple.

As a family barbecue and camping trip unfold, all of the Paradises get together for a party. It's a noisy occasion, but truths emerge as their various family lives begin to take divergent paths.

A toe-curling date was the centrepiece of Love And Marriage, when retired lollipop lady Pauline (Alison Steadman) went for a drink and a movie with widowed teacher Peter (Bruce Alexander).

We know that Pauline is a dating novice - she's only been out with one man, and she's been married to him for 40 years. But last week she left him, and moved in with her flighty sister (Celia Imrie), who really should have explained some dating basics. Such as, if your hubby phones you during the date, don't answer. And if you do answer, don't have a blazing row. And if you do have a blazing row, remember that your date can hear everything you're saying about him.

The show is fragmenting into a collection of sketches, starring energetic but two-dimensional characters. The most interesting is daughter Heather (Niky Wardley), boiling with jealousy if her younger husband even speaks to another woman.

There's a sort of charm about Pauline's car-mad husband Ken, too. When Heather tells him she's just seen her mum being whisked off for her date in Peter's flashy E-Type Jaguar, Ken looks torn between feeling hurt and being impressed. 'E-Type? What year?' he asks.

Pauline's sister is thoroughly dislikable - the sort of shallow, brittle schemer that Imrie plays so well. Envious for decades of her sibling's happy marriage, she's delighted to help break it up. 'You've left a world of pain, not a man,' she assures Pauline.

This is the sort of comedy-drama that signals its 60-something characters are Being Free and Living Life, by having them blow up a space hopper and bounce round the living room. But like Dates [Channel 4's drama], it needs to start tying its story strands together.

New comedy-drama Love and Marriage starred Alison Steadman as newly retired lollipop lady Pauline. We knew that Pauline was put upon because she was laden down with carrier bags, which also worked as metaphor for her bustling, self-absorbed extended family (including Extras' Ashley Jensen).

Pauline's husband, "Silent Ken" (Duncan Preston), had a face like a wet Wednesday and the conversational skills of undercoat. When he refused to comfort Pauline after her father died, nobody would have blamed her for lunging at him with her lollipop. Instead, Pauline became one of those "silver splitters" beloved of the Daily Mail, leaving Ken to live with her free-spirited sister (Celia Imrie), and declaring: "I'm not going to be a daughter or a wife or a mother any more." There's an audience for the likes of Love and Marriage, but it verged on meandering and urgently needs to pep up. I was left with the feeling that I'd been watching a stellar cast making ham sandwiches for an hour.