Craig Cash

The second of the new Comedy Playhouse season is written by The Royle Family's Craig Cash and Phil Mealey. Five seemingly disparate groups of people discuss their lives to camera, including Brenda and Roger, who run the "Brenroger" B&B, elderly couple Milton and Pearl, fixated with their smoke alarm, and brothers Martin and Tom. It's Alan Bennett with more swearing and a decent cast (Timothy West, Alison Steadman), but ultimately not quite as touching, clever or as funny as it thinks it is.

Whilst I initially thought that 50 Years of BBC 2 Comedy might be a serious insight into some of our most loved comedies, instead it was a whistlestop tour of everything that the BBC's second channel has done right over the past fifty years. In fact at times the show was too self-congratulatory for my liking and there was no admissions over some of the channel's more questionable comedies such as Heading Out and It's Kevin. Instead the series saw the channel take credit for airing the first sitcom that didn't include a comedian, that being The Likely Lads, and for giving us classic characters like Alan Partridge and David Brent. Indeed, the documentary really let Gervais talk about how excellent both The Office and Extras were but unsurprisingly Life's Too Short didn't get the same treatment. Additionally there were some questionable inclusions throughout the course of the two hours most notably The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy which I personally never classified as a sitcom. The programme also took time out to demonstrate how many BBC One sitcoms started on the channel whether it be the first series of Ab Fab or the pilot for Porridge. I personally was annoyed that, while the first series of The Royle Family got a mention, there was no room for Craig Cash's equally impressive Early Doors. Later, the documentary focused on BBC Two being the channel that aired Seinfeld and The Larry Sanders Show not mentioning that they gave both fairly bizarre places in the schedules. The one thing I was happy about was the inclusion of Rob Brydon's excellent Marion and Geoff, a programme that definitely deserves a large amount of praise. But predictably the most praise went to Fawlty Towers, the sitcom that many still hail as one of the best British programmes of all time. Ultimately, while it had some humorous moments, 50 Years of BBC2 Comedy was too long and featured far too much back-slapping for my liking.

The Function Room is something which I read about earlier this year and I thought sounded really good - a possible rival for Craig Cash and Phil Mealey's brilliant pub sitcom Early Doors from the early 00s. And I have to say - aside from the annoyingly loud studio audience - I liked it.

The cast was brilliant - Trollied's Beverly Rudd, The Inbetweeners' Blake Harrison, The Vicar of Dibley's James Fleet to name just a few. There was even a great late appearance from Psychoville's and one quarter of The League of Gentlemen's, Reece Shearsmith. With such a strong cast, I had a certain faith in The Function Room before it even started... and that faith paid off.

It took a while but right from the moment a disgruntled Rudd uttered the word "Bergetw*t", I found this show very funny.

I think the key to The Function Room, and something which seems to be missing from quite a few comedies nowadays, is strong characters. From a very theatrical actor (Fleet), to a passionate busy-body who generally objects to everything (Daniel Rigby, the one who plays the slightly odd flatmate in the BT ads), and to a young, outspoken couple who only seemed to be at the 'Meet the Police' meeting 'for the craic' (Harrison and Rudd).

The Function Room definitely has legs and should be picked up by Channel 4 even just as a three-part series. It's far more deserving than Verry Terry!

More small things just barely happen in episode three of Ralf Little and Michelle Terry's watery comedy. The seaside caff has a fancy new menu nobody can understand ("Lapsang souchong! Lapsang souchong!"), and there's confusion over which of the love-struck young adults will attend a pub quiz.

In between are hints that the characters would be adorable if we only knew them. The Café wants to be warm and deft, a bit like The Royle Family or Gavin & Stacey, but it's a superficial copy. Craig Cash's lyrical direction tries to add depth and ends up pvercompensating - he's got a crane and by heck he's going to use it.

I was once too rude and frankly wrong about a Craig Cash thing, Early Doors, which in the subsequent year I grew to love, once I'd got the pacing and the gentle humour into my head. The Cafe, directed by Cash and written by Ralf Little and Michelle Terry, who co-star, is a terribly similar vehicle, based this time not in a pub but, yes, a cafe, in Weston-super-Mare, and none the less warming for its derivation.

Already now we have the characters - the apparently dotty gran who's still a techno-whizz, the single mum running the cafe and trying desperately to marry off her pretty daughter, Sarah. Sarah's various possible suitors, her nice ex, Ralf, and the pompous rich homecoming whizz-kid. The pace is... slow. Delightfully so. The humour is... slow. Delightfully so. As in when Ralf's character asks for an "egg mayo baguette, but no mayo. And on a roll". Long pause. "Egg roll, then?" "Yes."

Oh, you have to see it to get it, and I really wish they hadn't so directly lifted, from Blackadder, the phrase "thick as a whale omelette", but, trust me, there's a lot of slow-cooked delight here.

Sky 1's latest sitcom The Cafe, written by and starring Ralf Little and Michelle Terry, is set in a family run cafe on the Weston-super-Mare seafront. "This really is the arse end of nowhere" observes one visitor into his mobile phone, all within the hearing of the diners and staff (frequently one and the same thing).
That may be so, but the unprepossessing location is home to a truly fresh, funny, romantic and charming show, populated by believable, likeable characters. Terry plays Sarah, recently returned from London nursing a broken heart, bruised ego and ambitions as a writer of children's books. Little is Richard, care home assistant by day, putative rock star by night. Former childhood sweethearts, the pair have settled into a comfortable platonic friendship. As if.

Director Craig Cash imposes his trademark naturalism and attention to detail to the proceedings whilst terrific dialogue, always funny but never forced, pings around the walls of the cafe like a demented squash ball. I sat through the first two episodes sporting a delighted grin, disturbed only by the occasional guffaw. Comparisons with Gavin & Stacey are inevitable, but favourable. The Cafe might just prove a similar comedy classic.

Is it wrong to judge a show by its theme tune? The folky version of Somewhere Beyond The Sea which opens The Cafe is sung by Kathryn Williams in a voice so wistfully fairy-like she makes Janet Devlin off The X Factor sound like Joe Cocker.

The second impression you'll get of The Cafe is that it's a bit Early Doors On Sea because it's directed by Craig Cash and is set, as you could probably guess, in and around a pretty beach-front cafe in Weston-super-Mare called Cyril's.

It's written by and stars Ralf Little and Michelle Terry (who is actually from Weston) and it makes a nice change to see Somerset getting a bit of a look-in, instead of the North West.

Having said that, many of the eccentrics who frequent the cafe run by Carol (Ellie Haddington) could have just stepped off the bus from Doc Martin territory. One of them, Kieran, who works as a living statue, is actually a different colour every day (a bit like Gold Guy in the short-lived sitcom Angelo's). Michelle Terry plays Carol's daughter Sarah, who's reluctantly living back home after a stint in London and is trying to become a writer.

Little plays her ex-boyfriend Richard who works in a care-home.

But a potential new relationship arrives tonight in the shape of an old school friend who has just zoomed down from the capital in a Porsche.

John is played by Daniel Ings from Pete Versus Life, who now seems in danger of being type-cast as the handsomest man for miles around. Poor thing. Must be tough for him.

This is the kind of show for which the word "bittersweet" could have been invented. A social hub, wry chitchat among the regulars and the occasional ripple of pathos - it's all here in this new seaside-set sitcom written by and starring Ralf Little and Michelle Terry, and directed by Craig Cash.

Yet while The Café does, at times, capture the loneliness that people can experience when everything around them is all-too-familiar, it's not as subtle as the best of the genre, such as Cash's understated Early Doors. In fact, the programme it most resembles is the short-lived Angelo's, a 2007 comedy set in a greasy spoon that, oddly enough, also featured a living-statue among its patrons. As for whether The Café will disappear as quickly, there's a danger that viewers will find it all a little bit too inconsequential.

Royle Family actors Ralf Little and Craig Cash collaborate for a gentle sitcom set in a seaside café in Weston-super-Mare. Cash directs a script by Little and actress Michelle Terry in a story revolving around three generations who run a struggling café: Gran (June Watson), divorcee Carol (Ellie Haddington) and daughter Sarah (Terry). The characters are nicely observed - in particular some of the café regulars such as Richard (Little), a care-home assistant and Sarah's ex, and Keiran (Kevin Trainor), who works as a "living statue" - but The Cafe's sedate pace does make it a bit dull.

A new sitcom from director and executive producer Craig Cash (The Royle Family) that is co-written by Ralf Little (The Royle Family and Two Pints...) and Michelle Terry (Reunited). It's a classic British sitcom set-up - take an institution (in this case a seaside cafe) and use it as a hub for characters to interact and to tease out class, inter-generational and social observations. The comedy and characters are gentle, if at times familiar, but there's a nice pace to it, as though pitched somewhere between Gavin And Stacey and Alan Bennett.