Daisy Haggard

It all sounds very About A Boy. A selfish, immature thirty-something gets landed with caring for an intelligent, far-too-grown-up-for-his-age 11-year-old. But Uncle - the fourth and final pilot in the 4Funnies strand - isn't an fluffy romcom, it's a smart, foul-mouthed sitcom with a brilliantly rude lead performance by stand-up circuit fave Nick Helm.

Andy (Helm) is a depressed, selfish, washed-up musician on the cusp of killing himself. But just before he can take the suicide plunge he receives a call from his single-mum sister Sam (Daisy Haggard), who begs the miserable layabout to pick up her son, Errol, from school and take him to football practice. Andy hates Errol and Errol hates Andy, but when a blackmailing truce is called, they begin to get along. If this all sounds a little predictable, it is. But Uncle's sharp script shows promise - it's packed with jokes and neatly balances dark gags and cutesy morals. And Helm's performance makes Andy a sweary, sarcastic, self-centred treat.

There appears to be an unwritten rule when it comes to animation in the UK that unless it's by Aardman, it'll be rubbish. Full English seems to obey this rule, which may explain why Channel 4 is airing it at 22.50.

The other reason of course being the crudeness of the humour. It's been described as the British Family Guy by some critics, which brings us to another unwritten rule on animation: if a British comedy's marketed as the British version of a successful American comedy, the British comedy will be rubbish in comparison. Again, Full English conforms.

The series centres on a "typical""British suburban family; put-upon father Edgar (Richard Ayoade), emo daughter Eve (Daisy Haggard), and horrid superrich father-in-law Ken (Oliver Maltman) who has an imaginary, gigantic, green friend called Squidge.

Full English doesn't seem to have one big problem but lots of little ones. The animation by Alex Scarfe (son of Gerald Scarfe) is very poor in terms of quality. The characters seem one dimensional (as opposed to their 2D visual portrayals).

But for me the worst is its attempts at satire. The plot of the first episode sees Eve go on Britain's Got Talent with her band, failing, but getting back on by pretending her parents are dead. How original. It's all the same, with Simon Cowell being a vicious git, contestants doing freakishly horrid acts, and others playing the sympathy vote. It's all been done before.

I'll concede there were some moments of laughter, mainly the more violent cartoonish sequences - like Squidge's attempts to hang himself, or the eldest son of the family hiding under the car, only to get badly hurt because he's so fat he gets terrible friction off the road as the car moves. But other than that I think that Full English hasn't got much going for it.

This new cartoon series is Britain's answer to ]Family Guy.But if it looks slickly American that's because, although it was created by brothers Jack and Harry Williams and Alex Scarfe - son of cartoonist Gerald Scarfe and Jane Asher - the animation was done in LA at the studio responsible for Futurama, and The Simpsons Movie.

Be warned that Full English isn't for kids. It features animated sex plus some stuff about Nazis and disabled people that is offensive in ways I haven't even worked out yet. And one character's pursuit of The Queen could well spark another royal scandal. Simon Cowell probably won't be a fan either.

The voice work is by Richard Ayoade as dad Edgar, Rosie Cavaliero as wife Wendy and Fonejacker's Kayvan Novak as both of their sons.

The standout tonight is daughter Eve (voiced by Daisy Haggard), who auditions for Britain's Got Talent with hilariously predictable results. I'm not sure about the father-in-law and his imaginary friend, though. Is Britain ready for a large green balloon?

Pucks! takes a time out tonight when news breaks that Merc's father has died, furnishing the writers of Episodes with all the tragicomic potential of a funeral. As with so much of this series, it's a qualified success, as a procession of competitive mourning techniques (muffin basket? charity donation?) open up further faultlines in Sean and Bev's moribund relationship. Stephen Mangan, Tamsin Greig and Matt LeBlanc are now displaying the sort of relaxed chemistry that only comes with time, and the latter struts off with most of the best lines (the less politically correct, the better). But the attempts at pathos fall flat - these characters haven't done enough to earn our sympathy yet. And why sideline Daisy Haggard, whose formidable arsenal of disgusted expressions was such a pleasure in Series 1?

There can be a lot of fun for a comedy actor, offering a space where the performer isn't obliged to share the credit for a laugh with the writer. There were two good examples in this week's Episodes, in which Stephen Mangan plays one half of a sitcom-writing team. The first was one of his specialities as an actor - the facial expression of a wrestling match between baser instincts and finer ones, played out here when he's offered a free sports car by the Hollywood star who broke up his marriage. The second came from Daisy Haggard, who played an irretrievably dim American executive giving notes after a script run-through. The line wasn't bad - "Page 18?... will anyone know who Rudyard Kipling is?" - but it was the long pause as she tried to work out how to respond to a counter-argument that was really funny. As Episodes can be, incidentally, when it doesn't get carried away with self-reference.

Daisy Haggard interview

The star of Becky Shaw on why she's happy playing goofballs and nutters.

Episodes, which got uproarious laughter in cut-down form at the Television Critics Association press tour in July, does not disappoint an ounce as it rolls through a seven-episode season. It also signals a savvy return to television for LeBlanc, who manages to be the butt of the joke one moment then hilariously likable the next. It takes confidence to play yourself but not really yourself and to know that moving past Joey and Friends means a simultaneous embracing/mocking of the legacy.

The premise of Episodes is simple (and all too real). Over-the-top, hug-happy, faux-sincere network president Merc Lapidus (John Pankow) meets the happily married writing team of Sean and Beverly Lincoln (Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig) right as they've snared a slew of BAFTA Awards for their (fictional) hit series, Lyman's Boys.

Lapidus loves the series and wants it on his network. He tries to woo the duo to the States, saying the show's perfect as is and would require a mere 20 minutes of their magic to make it Americanized. They can spend the rest of their time counting the money and screwing in the pool.

So they make the leap. And, not surprisingly, it's a long drop. Lapidus wants the British star of the series that has run for four seasons to audition - despite Sean and Beverly having told him he had the job.

Turns out, Lapidus doesn't watch much TV. "There's a chance that Merc might not have actually seen your show," says Carol (Kathleen Rose Perkins), second-in-command to Lapidus. "What?!" Sean and Beverly say in tandem. "I'm not saying he hasn't seen it," Carol says. "Has he seen it?" Beverly asks. "No," Carol says, shaking her head sadly.

And so it goes. Episodes was created by David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik, the writing duo that knows more than a little something about how the industry works. (Crane wrote for Friends, and Klarik wrote for Mad About You; both wrote for The Class.) There's so much delicious fun-house-mirror truth here. When the British thespian (played with gravitas by Richard Griffiths) does the audition, Lapidus and everybody else howls with laughter. They ask him to step outside for a moment, and Lapidus says, "Is it me or does anyone else think he comes off a bit too English?" They then make him read it again with an American accent. Nobody laughs.

Episodes might be inside baseball to some, but viewers are savvy enough about real-life industry types to get the joke. (God help them if they really were to see how shows evolve.) One of the sly bits in the series is Myra (Daisy Haggard), the head of comedy development, who has the same sour smile and confused look at all times - a visual joke that never fails.

Mangan and Greig are exceptionally good as the fish-out-of-water Brits, horrified that their show is getting rejiggered. Mangan's Sean is seduced by Hollywood, and Greig's Beverly is repulsed and appalled at the cluelessness. When the network hires LeBlanc to play the lead, Episodes takes off to all kinds of unexpected places - with LeBlanc getting a glorious showcase - and the show avoids any potential trouble spots.

In fairness, not every network would take a British series called Lyman's Boys, about a headmaster at an elite boys boarding school, and change it to Pucks! about a hockey coach at said school. But then again, one or two would. And that's all the truth Episodes needs to tap into.

It takes a lot to make up for the pain of losing Ed [Reardon's Week], but Fabulous, which began a second series on Tuesday (Radio 4, 11pm), looks like doing more than its bit. It's completely different - it's written by a woman (Lucy Clarke), for one thing, and it's maonly about women, but there are parallels between Faye, the lead character, and Ed. Both are endlessly positive, in a grim, Blitz spirit kind of way, about the future even as the present falls apart about them. And each is played by an actor blessed with a voice perfectly matched to their character. In Faye's case it's Daisy Haggard, who manages to sound both husky and squeaky at the same time and is thus both sexy and mildly disconcerting, as though Fenella Fielding had within her the demon alter ego of Violet Elizabeth Bott.

There's no point in talking about the plot - we're deep in Bridget Jones country here - and the unending stream of punchlines and one-liners don't translate that well to the printed page (I know, because I wrote them down and, it seems, context is all), but Clarke is like Evans, Douglas and Nickolds in that she appears have had a whale of a time writing it all, laughing at her typewriter as she lets her imagination run riot. What larks, Pip.

Episode two of The Persuasionists (BBC2) did not reward the theory that this new sitcom needed time to bed in. It's set in an advertising agency and features a talented cast (Adam Buxton, Simon Farnaby, Daisy Haggard) you have probably seen being funny in other things, but if you laughed at this, I'd like to try a handful of whatever pills you're on. Actually, I did laugh once, when a character tried to encapsulate Australian culture with the words "Have you ever worn shorts to a funeral?" but, had I not been watching in a professional capacity, I would have switched over long before that point. It's hard to locate exactly what went wrong with this project, so I'm recording a verdict of death by misadventure.

Never let it be said I don't give things a chance. The second episode of The Persuasionists was marginally better than last week's yawn-fest, mainly because there was more going on, but "The Handsomeness" was still a laugh-free zone for the most part. Things perk up whenever Daisy Haggard or Simon Farnaby are around acting silly, but it's otherwise a waste of time and talent.

The plot this week involved a campaign for beauty cream "Night Gak", being modeled by bimbo popstar Victoria (Kelly Adams), who revealed to Greg (Adam Buxton) that she's looking for an "ordinary" boyfriend, prompting him to demonstrate his innate facileness in order to woo her. Meanwhile, Emma (Haggard) was given a position of power that led to her quarantining all the ugly employees in the agency's boiler room.

Look, there's definitely potential in an advertising agency sitcom with an episode focusing on beauty, but The Persuasionists is too daft to land any insightful blows, and its surrealism isn't clever enough to feel inspired. The IT Crowd does a far better job of skewering workplace/pop-culture targets via oddball, larger-than-life comedy. Here, you just have Iain Lee acting like he's still reading The 11 O'Clock Show's autocue, and Jarred Christmas bellowing.