David Walliams

Big School, series 2

Big School is a British Sitcom that began last year and was highly successful and incredibly popular. It has a common set up, being set in a regular secondary school, but the two main roles are filled by the nation's sweethearts, and comedy legends, Catherine Tate and David Walliams. The double act is striking because it blends two of the biggest comic actors from when I was very young, and I wouldn't necessarily have thought they could work so well together. But, God, do they.

This David Walliams vehicle - devised by the Dawson Bros and the man himself - is now on its second series, a mysterious feat for a school-based sitcom loaded with toilet jokes and rubbish innuendo. Rather than embracing its student contingent (see: Bad Education), far too much time is dedicated to the teachers. This week, hapless French pedagogue Miss Postern (Catherine Tate) is out to woo a new colleague, whose disability is played out for some predictably un-PC laughs. Big but not very clever.

Radio Times review

Mr Church and Mr Gunn are locked in their ridiculous competition to win the affections of needy, passive-aggressive school siren Miss Postern. It's her birthday but no one cares, apart from the frenzied Church.

As the second series of David Walliams's school-set sitcom hits its stride, there are more daft gags, but Big School manages not to be sent for detention because of the great cast - Philip Glenister, Catherine Tate, Walliams himself - who throw everything into it.

Some of the jokes go on too long, including a laboured bit of business involving a hunky, blind new geography teacher, and the whole thing is often breathtakingly coarse (a running joke about gay sex, for instance). But Frances de la Tour as the lubricious head steals every scene and it's always good to see Steve Speirs doing his mournful Welsh thing, here as the useless caretaker.

A second term of tomfoolery for David Walliams's school sitcom, and changes are afoot. Bullet-brained games teacher Mr Gunn takes on geography with an aplomb that doesn't quite extend to learning how to pronounce the word, while music teacher Mr Martin is treating classes to a PR campaign promoting his pop career. Comfortingly, though, Walliams's Mr Church is as clueless as ever when wooing Catherine Tate's Miss Postern. As big, broad sitcoms go, this is amiable fare.

Radio Times review

The first series of David Walliams's classroom sitcom launched to high hopes and high ratings. That might be because so many of us still have our fingers crossed that either Walliams or Matt Lucas will at some point recall, in a small way, the comic heights they reached in Little Britain.

Ratings slipped as people realised Big School wasn't the moment we could uncross our fingers, but is instead an old-fashioned, likeable enough, broadish sort of comedy full of familiar joke-teacher figures (the macho gym master, the intimidating head) and the odd good gag.

As a new term starts, Mr Church (Walliams) still holds a candle for Miss Postern (Catherine Tate) and at assembly, Frances de la Tour delivers a welcome speech: "As your headmistress, I offer you one word of friendly advice: cross me and I will destroy you."

As it returns for a second series, Big School really seems to have found its comedy feet. David Walliams' performance is still every bit as subtle as his cross-dressing "I'm a laydee" Emily was in Little Britain. That is to say, not at all.

But Big School is well enough written to survive his camp, asexual gurning and the dream cast add extra polish to an already shiny script.

In tonight's opener, music teacher Mr Martin (Daniel Rigby) is about to launch his pop career. (His single, written by David Arnold and Michael Price, sounds like an entirely credible X Factor winner's song.)

Mr Barber (Steve Speirs) has had to take a career change, PE teacher Mr Gunn (Philip Glenister) is now also teaching geography, and even the confident Miss Postern (Catherine Tate) finds herself at a crossroads in her career.

In one slightly depressing piece of casting, former EastEnder Cheryl Fergison replaces Julie T Wallace as the wordless lab assistant who has the hots for Walliams' Mr Church. Why depressing? Because making someone the butt of the joke just because they don't look like Angelina Jolie feels uncomfortably like bullying.

But the real reason for Big School's success is probably Frances de la Tour. Even when she's not actually on screen, just knowing that she's lurking somewhere in the building as vinegary headmistress Ms Baron is reassuring.

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David Walliams, Catherine Tate, Frances De La Tour, Joanna Scanlan, Philip Glenister and that bloke form the BT adverts. You can't fault the cast of Big School, which returns for a second run. The challenge is making something mainstream enought for primetime BBC One but still interesting enough so that the talented performers don't sleepwalk through it.

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