David Cummings

Review: Urban Myths: Marilyn Monroe and Billy Wilder

Let's just say it is worth watching to the end of this neat little film written by Dave Cummings and directed by Sean Foley - and not just for a little in-joke for those familiar with the actual film that eventually became a huge hit.

Paul Whitehouse's parody DJ Mike Smash emerges from Alan Partridge's shadow to present a compilation of Christmas hits. It's low budget - just the character on a radio studio set and the songs' videos. The clips come with spoof TOTP2-style captions but, sadly, they're half-hearted despite being penned by Whitehouse and regular co-writer David Cummings. On screen, though, Whitehouse transcends the will-this-do script.

"Was Bowie really a bender or was he putting it on?" is one of the questions that come tumbling from the mouth of former glam-rocker Ray, a "service user" visited by the titular mental health professional in Nurse (Wednesday, 11pm, Radio 4). Ray feels that everybody did better than he did: Bolan, Springsteen and, unaccountably, Peter Andre.

Like all the male characters in this serious comedy, Ray is played by Paul Whitehouse, who created the show along with David Cummings. The nurse, played by Esther Coles, provides reassurance to each of them, from the bed-bound middle-aged man who lives with his mother to Ray, still furious that his star-spangled peers managed to spin out their careers longer than he did.

Radio Times review

Paul Whitehouse and David Cummings's funny, moving and meaningful comedy about Esther Coles's community psychiatric nurse Liz allows some flashes of optimism in a most unexpected quarter this week: morbidly obese Graham appears to have found a girlfriend.

Of course everything remains trying for poor Liz in an episode that considers the scarcity of resources for the vital service she provides. We also meet a soldier with post-traumatic stress in scenes that are incredibly affecting - but also eerily plausible.

The techniques Liz uses are based on actual remedies and approaches that are being used right now.

Radio Times review

Paul Whitehouse, David Cummings and Esther Coles's accomplished Radio 4 comedy, which engaged intelligently with mental health issues, has here been sensitively rescaled for the small screen.

Coles plays a community nurse meeting an array of characters (some new and mainly played by Whitehouse). They include Billy the agoraphobic ex-con, Herbert the ageing rake and - probably most memorably - the morbidly obese Graham who is engaged in a terrible, co-dependent relationship with his obsessive mother and her revoltingly unhealthy cooking.

There are nose-snortingly outrageous laughs aplenty as we'd expect from any Whitehouse stable. But, thanks to the judiciousness and ebullience of the writing and the tenderness and skill of the performances, they never detract from the narrative's essential humanity and warmth.

Radio Times review

I arrive late to Nurse, Radio 4's series of short snappy comedies. It's in six parts and by the time I'd caught up with the good reviews, it was already halfway through.

Written by Paul Whitehouse and David Cummings, it features a community mental health nurse (Esther Coles, who contributes additional material). She sounds as patient, good-humoured and capable as you'd want a community mental health nurse to be. She visits a host of people in their own homes, almost all of them Paul Whitehouse.

In episode four (my episode one) there's a chat about the value of gardening, with Billy "finding God at the end of a spade". Ray has some brilliantly funny lines (I cannot repeat here the one involving the Isle of Man), but his bravado can't mask the hints at his troubled life. Herbert believes in the art of letter-writing. He's written to Kingsley Amis and won't countenance the suggestion that he's dead: "No... he's just having a break."

Tommy challenges Nurse: "You think I'm away with the fairies." And Lorrie, one of the few characters not played by Whitehouse, explains why she won't take her medication, even though her daughter has been taken away from her: "When I take my pills, me no hear Jesus."

Luckily the Radioplayer is our friend. Catch up with Nurse while you can.

Right from the off, Rockton Manor Studios (Radio 2) was funny. This new sitcom, written by David Cummings (Fast Show, Happiness) for his first radio commission, and starring Paul Whitehouse, is set in an ailing recording studio run by a former roadie. Early on, you could feel the sitcom staples easing into place - the hapless protagonist; impending change of circumstances; tangled family relationships - but pleasingly these didn't veer in expected directions.

It is also perfectly pitched for the Radio 2 audience, with music gags aplenty, and biographical landmarks told through songs and bands ("a Teardrop Explodes tour I was on"). Mostly, though, the pleasure lies in the performances from Whitehouse as the former roadie, and Mark Benson as his best friend. Whitehouse has great fun with railing against modern music, or any music that's not his mouldy old "canon of enduring quality".

Benson, though, almost stole the show with exquisite comic timing. His explanation of why he turned to selling houses ("I wanted to give something back") was as ticklish as his successive interruptions ("Who wants a Twiglet?") of a major family conference.

There's only one problem with the Beeb's newest Friday night offering - it's being billed as a comedy. This is as misleading as ordering sherry trifle in a restaurant and getting a prawn cocktail. They're both nice, but you'd chew those prawns suspiciously knowing that this wasn't quite what you were expecting.

Unlike bad comedies (BBC3's Clone, After You've Gone, etc) which over-compensate by trying too hard to be funny, Parents Of The Band doesn't seem to be trying at all, which, funnily enough, is its saving grace.

It's written by David Cummings, who, as well as once writing for The Fast Show, was formerly a guitarist with Del Amitri - so he does know his stuff.

Just put any idea out of your head that it's supposed to be making you laugh and you then might even enjoy it.