Daisy Haggard

Daisy Haggard and Adeel Akhtar interview

Haggard says public attitudes to women who commit crimes fascinate her: "I was always really interested in how harshly we judge a woman who has done a bad thing over how we judge men."

Daisy Haggard interview

Back To Life: the unlikely comedy about life after 18 years in prison, according to creator Daisy Haggard.

Hang Ups DVD review

What a surprise when an American concept gets reworked into a British series and actually works.

Review, Uncle, BBC3, Episode 4

I have a confession to make. I'd slightly gone off Uncle this time round, which is why my reviews have been running late. Watching it - previously so much fun - had started to feel like a chore and I wondered where the plot as going. But I take it all back. I was rather blown away by this latest episode.

Review: Uncle, BBC3, episode 2

This is just a quick heads up to remind people to watch the third series of Uncle, which looks like it is going to build to a nice - or maybe not so nice? - romantic finale in a few weeks.

Daisy Haggard: If I had Botox, my career would be over

Her career depends on her 'wiggly' face and her most memorable TV character was built on a repertoire of snorts and whinnies. Now, in her latest stage role, the Episodes actor is talking fluent gobbledegook.

Episodes (BBC Two) is a Transatlantic affair about a husband-and-wife writing team (Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig) who decamp to Los Angeles and adapt their History Boys-esque Brit hit into a dumbed-down US sitcom starring Matt LeBlanc. How very meta. How very postmodern. How very mediocre.

The cartoonish American characters supplied the lion's share of laughs. Ageing playboy LeBlanc sent himself up gamely: vain, self-destructive, increasingly doughy but still silver foxy, with enough flashes of Joey Tribbiani to keep Friends fans happy. Daisy Haggard and Kathleen Rose Perkins were funny as face-pulling, nice-but-dim network executives Myra and Carol, with a tendency to trip over their own high heels in their scramble up the career ladder.

There were some sharp lines. Matt's battle for custody of his children was undermined by his arrest for drunk-driving. "You're the worst client I've ever had," barked his lawyer (our own Nigel Planer, putting on a ropy American accent). "I'd happily trade you for two Mel Gibsons and a Tiger Woods." Carol was infatuated with her square-jawed boss but insisted: "Obviously I would never go there." Beverly (Greig) raised a sceptical eyebrow: "Pur-lease. You keep an apartment there."

Newly reconciled Beverly and Sean (Mangan) were on the rocks again after she admitted having a one-night stand. It's this central pair that are the problem. They convince as writing partners but not as a couple. Mangan, who is normally excellent (see Green Wing, Dirk Gently) comes over like a whiny student. Greig's character is the moral centre of the show but this makes her a bit blank and boring. Their chemistry is strangely sexless. A snogging scene was faintly uncomfortable, of the sort that makes a teenager go, "Ugh, Muuum, Daaad, that's disgusting!" if their parents kiss.

Somehow Episodes has made it to a third series without leaving much of an impression. A fourth has even been commissioned. Presumably it survives owing to the star power of LeBlanc. It makes the odd sharp observation about Hollywood and the fickle nature of celebrity but feels undercooked. It's so busy smugly admiring its own cleverness that it forgot to add enough jokes.