Claire Rushbrook

My Mad Fat Diary's second series came to an end last week. The latter half of the series had been fairly depressing as Rae (Sharon Rooney) launched into a disastrous relationship with the disgusting Liam (Turlough Convery). Meanwhile relations with her mum (Claire Rushbrook) had hit an all-time low and her therapist Kester (Ian Hart) also stopped her from visiting him at home. Meanwhile her friends started to abandon her as Chloe (Jodie Comer) went missing and ex-boyfriend Finn (Nico Mirallegro) went to Leeds to live with his uncle. However it was a letter from Finn claiming that Rae was the glue of their friendship group that made her adamant to turn things around.

After a disastrous end to her pregnancy, Rae's mum ended up critically ill in hospital while Rae herself was delighted when she became a sister. Meanwhile Kester gave her the confidence to stand-up to the evil older guys who were essentially keeping Chloe hostage. Obviously Tom Bidwell built things up to a happy ending where everybody was friends again and Rae and Finn reconciled with an extremely saucy final sequence. The only issue was that Bidwell had built up so many stories over the past few episodes that there were plenty of sub-plots to resolve. As a result some of the conclusions felt incredibly rushed especially Rae's final scene with Liam which I felt should have been given more time based on the fact that he's been quite a pivotal character this series.

Ultimately though the episode ended in exactly the way it should have done and I think Bidwell did the right thing by giving the fans of the show what they wanted. I'm unsure at this point whether the show needs a third series as there's not much I think that needs to be explored aside from Rae's new role as a sister. Although I'm a fan of the show, and am delighted that it's been nominated for a couple of BAFTAs, I don't want it to carry on just for the sake of it.

Finally I must praise the performance from Sharon Rooney, who was cruelly overlooked in the aforementioned nominations, who really holds the programme together. If this really is the end for My Mad Fat Diary, and my gut says it is, than I hope that Rooney goes on to bigger and better things a she certainly deserves to.

Why we're excited for the return of My Mad Fat Diary

The first series of the E4 comedy-drama, My Mad Fat Diary was an unexpected pleasure. Anchored by a sledgehammer emotional performance from Sharon Rooney and with the delightful Claire Rushbrook and Ian Hart providing support, it was just a joy to watch. Painful, candid and unashamedly honest in its portrayal of adolescence, My Mad Fat Diary was one of my highlights of 2013. Going simply by this series two opener, I can predict a positive future for the wonderful show.

As if being 16 years old, 16-and-a-half stone and a resident of smalltown Lincolnshire wasn't bad enough, Rae (Sharon Rooney) has just spent four months in a psychiatric ward. So it's understandable that she might fancy a new start, under the watchful eyes of her clued-up doctor (Ian Hart) and erratic mother (Claire Rushbrook). But can she hide her past from her new friends and overcome her issues to make the most of teenage life in the Britpop era? Based on writer Rae Earl's real-life diaries, E4's latest series is shaping up to be a triumph to file alongside Skins and Misfits, while being entirely different to both and a tougher sell (neither as on-trend as the former nor as high concept as the latter) than either.

Key to its success is Rooney's empathetic, guileless lead performance, while the comedy and tragedy inherent in the premise is deftly handled. An appealing, confident opener.

My Mad Fat Diary: review

There are some nice performances notably Claire Rushbrook and Ian Hart as the token adults and new comer Sharon Rooney leads the production with humour and personal charm. However, like much 'comedy drama', I feel that My Mad Fat Diary lacks that the emotional punch to be a drama or the gags or wit to be a comedy; and we will end up with little more than another soap opera for adolescents.

Based on Rae Earl's real-life book about an overweight, funny, boy-mad teenager - with mental health issues - growing up in Lincolnshire in the mid-Nineties, this comedy drama has a lot going for it. Rae is nicely played by Sharon Rooney. Claire Rushbrook plays her unreliable mum and Ian Hart her therapist. The opener sees Rae discharged from a psychiatric hospital and hooking up with childhood friend Chloe (Jodie Comer).

Of course, most shows which open with the father of three small children killing himself might have felt obliged to remain quite dark for a while. Yet, as it turned out, Mutual Friends is a comedy drama with the emphasis firmly on the comedy. Carl's widow Leigh (Claire Rushbrook) was soon dealing with her grief by speaking in a series of wisecracks. Martin and Jen's decision to go for marriage counselling led to the usual scenes of a wimpy bloke in an armchair saying, 'So how does that make you feel?' a lot. Above all, Patrick is so total a representative of male self-centredness that even in an ITV1 sitcom, he might feel slightly broad-brush.

The odd thing, however, is that the result is by no means a disaster. For a start, the script, written by Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto (Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No 42), seems perfectly content with the fact that it's not pushing back the frontiers of television - and instead gets on with doing the traditional stuff as efficiently and funnily as possible. A strong cast helps too, with Marc Warren in particular showing an unexpected lightness of touch. (Last night he even managed to do the missing-the-school-play scene without going over the top.)

In the end, none of this is quite enough to solve the mystery of why so much talent has been poured into making such a bog-standard TV drama. On the other hand, it does make you fairly grateful that it has.

Mutual Friends started with a suicide but ended with a fire engine. Carl's suicide was the writers' device with which to bring together his surviving friends, Martin, played by Marc Warren, and Patrick (Alexander Armstrong). Martin was the worrying type and he had loads to worry about: not only was he about to lose his job as a solicitor but his wife, Jen (Keeley Hawes), announced that she had slept with Carl and that their marriage was in trouble (all Martin's fault).

Patrick also had his problems: a personal financial crisis had got his E-Type Jag repossessed and one of his business partners was edging him out of his own Boden-style catalogue company while edging himself into his former girlfriend's knickers. The worrying thing about Patrick, buoyed along by ego and testosterone, was his inability to worry. Yet this follicly challenged Lothario was not, it transpired, irredeemably self-centred. It was he, after all, who was responsible for the fire engine's comical appearance - called not to hose a conflagration but to fulfil Martin's disgruntled young son's ambition to ride on one.

Warren, Armstrong and Hawes are watchable actors but you couldn't help but wish their parts had been occupied by Jimmy Nesbitt, Robert Bathurst and Helen Baxendale and that, as in Cold Feet, there had been room for a genuinely funny subplot (as regularly supplied by the actors Fay Ripley and John Thomson). Nor could you fail to spot how inspiration was running out even as early as episode one. Martin, for instance, kept being overheard saying things that he shouldn't by the people he was badmouthing. Only once could you accuse the programme of inventiveness and that was in the character of Carl's widow Leigh, played with cheerful understatement by Claire Rushbrook, who had clearly lost her how-to-grieve manual and went round saying how 'cross' she was with him.

My hunch is that Mutual Friends will keep its audience, not least because it is unusual in putting at its centre male rather than female friendships. But how, even as I watched its titles (as ripped off from Mad Men), I wished for more subtlety, more black humour, more depth of emotion!

Any show that starts with a reunion of old friends at a funeral is going to end up being compared to 80s film The Big Chill.

This new six-parter starring Marc Warren and Alexander Armstrong as chalk-and-cheese mates will also hook the Cold Feet crowd - with a nod to Desperate Housewives provided by the mystery of why their old pal Carl threw himself under a train.

I'm guessing it's because his wife Leigh (Claire Rushbrook) was secretly guzzling all his anti-depressants. The supposedly grieving widow is in such high spirits during this first hour, you wouldn't be surprised to see her suggest a game of naked Twister at his funeral.

Martin, a grumpy lawyer played by Warren, is harder hit by his friend's death, especially after his wife Jen (Keeley Hawes) blurts out (for no good reason) that she slept with Carl, sending their already dodgy marriage into a nosedive.

Warren wasn't the first choice for this part, which was originally earmarked for Armstrong's comedy partner Ben Miller. But he's as magnetically watchable here as usual, especially when tormented by visions of Jen and Carl together. Armstrong's character Patrick is a blabbermouthed perpetual teenager with a mail-order clothing business and a silver E-type Jag - cunningly shot here to look longer than the QE2. Only his ex-fiancee Liz (Sarah Alexander) is unimpressed.

Though billed as a comedy drama, there's more drama than comedy - but plenty to enjoy in this first, pacy instalment.