Dan Skinner

Prevenge - review

Prevenge was screened in the 'laughs' comedy strand of the London Film Festival, but the humour in Alice Lowe's directorial debut most definitely of the jet-black tone. Its tone is bleak and unnerving, with only the occasional dry comic moment offering relief from the brutal actions of its serial-killing anti-heroine, Ruth.

Yonderland series 3 episode 1 review: A Rising Tide

After a promising first series and a confident second, Yonderland has returned for a third and begins by posing the question, 'do you need a Chosen One after the evil has gone?'

Interview: Rarely Asked Questions - Dan Renton Skinner

Sonny and Cher. Laurel and Hardy. History is littered with double acts. And now there is Alex Lowe and Angelos Epithemiou, who are about to set out on their New Power Generation tour. Lowe is best known as radio phone-in loving OAP Barry from Watford. Burger van-owner Angelos is probably best known for keeping score in Shooting Stars and carrying a plastic shopping bag with him wherever he goes. Beyond The Joke has managed to persuade the man behind the plastic bag, Dan Renton Skinner, to chat to us. You will also know him from House of Fools and all sorts of other interesting acting projects - he popped up in the movie High Rise earlier this year.

Opportunity knocks at Jessop Square as the family prepare for a talent show. Tony (Dan Skinner) has turned his hand to kung fu, while Brenda (Katherine Parkinson) tackles disco. All-out war breaks out on the talent front and soon the neighbours become embroiled in an alarming yet impressive dance-off, the highlight of which comes in the form of the Palmers' interpretation of Grease. Elsewhere, Emma asks her parents for a skateboard, but can she bribe enough money out of them to save up for it?

Emma Kennedy is unlucky that her childhood-memoir sitcom comes so soon after Raised By Wolves and Cradle To Grave, but it doesn't help itself by sticking to such well-worn ground: tonight, Dad (Dan Skinner) fails to dissuade Mum (Katherine Parkinson) from learning to drive, while 10-year-old Emma (the ace Lucy Hutchinson) hunts for the sender of her first Valentine. The characters are well acted, but are either familiar types or wacky wildcards, and feel secondary to the light-brown 1970s nostalgia.

Dan Skinner's favourite TV

The Shooting Stars and House Of Fools actor on his love of Bloodline, how he'd bring back ITV wrestling and why couriers are curious characters.

The Kennedys had the tough job of following Have I Got News For You on BBC One. The Kennedys is based on the memoirs of journalist Emma Kennedy and just like Danny Baker's Cradle to Grave takes us back to the 1970s. Unlike Cradle to Grave, the family in The Kennedys isn't constantly shouting at each other and instead Emma's parents Brenda and Tony (Katherine Parkinson and Dan Skinner) are relatively demure when compared to their friends and neighbours. The opening episode sees Brenda live her aspirations of hosting the first dinner party in their small neighbourhood of Jessop Square. Brenda then instructs Tony to make a lasange, something that baffles him due to the fact that he has to use pasta that doesn't come from a tin. Tony asks friend Tim (Harry Peacock) to try and help him track down some pasta only to discover that his mate is conducting an affair. At the same time Brenda learns that Tim's girlfriend Jenny (Emma Pierson) is pregnant and hasn't told her other half yet. This perfectly sets up the comedy goldmine that is the awkward dinner party which includes Tim spending the entire meal bare-chested and his lover walking in on the meal to threaten physical violence against most of the guests. I was surprised by how much I liked The Kennedys and I think it had a certain sense of innocence that you don't see in sitcoms any more. That may have something to do with the fact that the comedy has a pre-teen protagonist in Lucy Hutchinson's Emma, with the young actress proving to be a comic revelation. Meanwhile the reliable Skinner and Parkinson were an absolute delight to watch as the social climbing parents with the former pulling off a great Welsh accent. Whether or not The Kennedys can keep the momentum of this first episode going remains to be seen but on first impressions this is a refreshingly likeable old-fashioned sitcom.

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Dan Skinner says critics didn't get House Of Fools

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In the 1970s no more than three minutes was permitted to pass without sighting a gentleman's handsome chest foliage, groomed as much as his luxuriant lip warmer, and this highly chucklesome Seventies-set comedy is careful to include a historically accurate man carpet.

Written by Emma Kennedy and starring Katherine Parkinson and Dan Skinner as Brenda and Tony Kennedy, it's Brenda's aspiration to exhibit her modern sophistication by holding their street's first dinner party and to serve a classy Italian dish called 'la-san-ier'.

But this is the 1970s, when 'la-san-ier' was harder to find than the bar in a pub, blanketed by full-strength tar fags, which forces Tony and daughter Emma (Lucy Hutchison) to enlist the aid of a neighbour with the connections to provide Italian grub. This undertaking has the anxious energy of a drug deal, and what the neighbour drags the Kennedys into is a dinner party which is even better than Abigail's.