Cheryl Fergison

Hard Cell review

Hard Cell seems to be from another time.

Review: Hard Cell, Netflix

Hard Cell certainly showcases her gift for characterisation - with some caveats - but it does feel terribly dated.

Hard Cell review

Catherine Tate's first attempt at a sitcom is lacklustre.

Hard Cell, review

Catherine Tate's prison sitcom is better than The Nan Movie - but only just.

Hard Cell review

Catherine Tate's confused comedy about prison life is criminally bad.

Hard Cell review

Catherine Tate's prison comedy is too much, too late.

As it returns for a second series, Big School really seems to have found its comedy feet. David Walliams' performance is still every bit as subtle as his cross-dressing "I'm a laydee" Emily was in Little Britain. That is to say, not at all.

But Big School is well enough written to survive his camp, asexual gurning and the dream cast add extra polish to an already shiny script.

In tonight's opener, music teacher Mr Martin (Daniel Rigby) is about to launch his pop career. (His single, written by David Arnold and Michael Price, sounds like an entirely credible X Factor winner's song.)

Mr Barber (Steve Speirs) has had to take a career change, PE teacher Mr Gunn (Philip Glenister) is now also teaching geography, and even the confident Miss Postern (Catherine Tate) finds herself at a crossroads in her career.

In one slightly depressing piece of casting, former EastEnder Cheryl Fergison replaces Julie T Wallace as the wordless lab assistant who has the hots for Walliams' Mr Church. Why depressing? Because making someone the butt of the joke just because they don't look like Angelina Jolie feels uncomfortably like bullying.

But the real reason for Big School's success is probably Frances de la Tour. Even when she's not actually on screen, just knowing that she's lurking somewhere in the building as vinegary headmistress Ms Baron is reassuring.

There are one or two funny moments in this second edition of Derren Litten's new health-club comedy - Alison (Rebecca Front) and her peculiar sleeping arrangements; Davina (Debbie Chazen) trying to realign the chakras of a flatulent punter; and Cheryl Fergison as insulted customer Ms Wylde being fobbed off with a colonic. The performances make this watchable.

But I'm still waiting for Frances Barber, as Alison's stable-owning mate Ginny, to get something worth her spit. And the addition of a Polish chef/plumber called - wait for it - Bolek seems to be heading nowhere and is just another sign of the woolly randomness of the script.

Rebecca Front is almost unrecognisable as blonde health club manageress and "Leighton Buzzard's slimmer of the decade" Alison Crabbe. Cheryl Fergison (EastEnders' Ev) plays an affronted punter, Bergita (sounds like "big eater"), while Tim Healy is a well-endowed handyman barely contained by his shorts. And the ever-arch Frances Barber pops up as... well, her role isn't clear in this first episode; maybe next week.

So, a promising ensemble for a sitcom that reads like a retread of The Brittas Empire, is a tad short on laughs and perhaps needed more sessions on a cross trainer before public exposure. Still, The Spa is the brainchild of Derren Litten, creator of the heroically bawdy Benidorm, which I won't hear a word against, so it could well take off in coming weeks. And this time, Litten has put himself in the frame as an aerobics instructor in a wheelchair.