Dawn French

Dawn French & Caroline Aherne for Loose Women?

Dawn French and Caroline Aherne and ex-Corrie fave Sally Lindsay are three of the stars being wooed by bosses looking to replace Kate Thornton and Zoe Tyler on Loose Women.

Dawn French reveals reasons behind her weight loss

She stunned fans earlier this month when she stepped out looking noticeably slimmer. And now Dawn French has revealed the reasons behind her astonishing four-and-a-half stone weight loss.

Dawn French is dating again and open to marrying again

Comedian Dawn French has revealed her lovelife is back on track after her heartbreaking marriage break-up from Lenny Henry.

French took months to decide over Henry split

Dawn French spent months deliberating over whether she should end her marriage to Lenny Henry as they battled to salvage the relationship.

Dawn French loses five stone in a year & that's no joke

Dawn French, who once tipped the scales at 19 stone, looked a new woman at an awards ceremony in London.

This gem from last year was executive produced by Hugo Blick, the man behind BBC2's mighty thriller The Shadow Line. However, if you come to Roger and Val expecting dark violence and crushing suspense, you'll be terribly disappointed. It's more like Blick's previous series Marion & Geoff or Sensitive Skin, a muted, micro-observed domestic drama that has enough funny and absurd moments to qualify as sitcom, even if that tag feels all wrong. Alfred Molina and Dawn French are superb as a devoted but prickly married couple with a tragedy in their past that only emerges via hints over the course of the series. The plotting is understated, to put it mildly (tonight's opener is taken up with hunting for the guarantee for a broken vacuum cleaner), but also sweet, funny and very sad. If you missed it first time round, record the whole series - you won't regret it.

And now a blasphemous confession: Psychoville (BBC2) isn't for me. It's comedy horror for the Ocado demographic, as scary as finding your delivery man has broken the bottle of balsamic vinegar en route, a gross-out as entertaining as a commodified trick-or-treat soiree in the suburbs. A clown with Down's syndrome, anyone? Dawn French pasting mashed swede into a woman's paralysed mouth? An officious librarian haunted by a dancing spectre? Thanks, but no.

Psychoville warrants comparison with Gigglebiz, Justin Fletcher's sometimes scary sketch show. Think of Fletcher's truly menacing Dinah Lady or his crazed fitness fanatic Keith Fit. Genuinely terrifying - and with a punchline rate that Psychoville's mighty writers can only look on and despair. And that's on CBeebies. Mind you, I did like the way French got stabbed with a pencil. She'd been asking for that.

It would take more than a waistcoat full of explosives to kill off Psychoville's cast of grotesques.

Series two opens with a funeral for a clown, but as we say RIP to Mr Jolly - the children's entertainer-turned-suicide bomber - a new mystery arises concerning a missing locket belonging to the Ravenhill Mental Hospital's sadistic Nurse Kenchington.

Fans of Psychoville will know better than to expect this plotline to be solved in any conventional sense.

Instead, just gorge on the details as Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith carry on twisting the horror genre into unexpected shapes like so many balloon animals.

So we welcome back serial killer David Sowerbutts, angry clown Mr Jelly, Dawn French's bonkers midwife and toy collector Mr Lomax.

Imelda Staunton's secret agent returns too, chanelling the spirit of Judi Dench in the Bond movies and there's a new character to populate your nightmares: The Silent Singer.

A reminder of the much-loved, quintessentially English sitcom is combined with the story of how it came together and what the series, which first aired in 1994, achieved, as it followed the cheering misadventures of Dawn French's passionate country vicar. Cast members, including French ("the heart and soul of the show"), and creator/writer Richard Curtis spill the beans.

Behind the Britcom - Dawn French on Richard Curtis

Over the next couple of weeks, leading up to the March 2011 PBS premiere of Behind the Britcom: From Script to Screen, our show on paying tribute to the writers of British situation comedy, will, hopefully, give you insight into those writers who's work has created friends and situations that have come in to your home for years.