Duncan Preston

Walters joins all-star cast to narrate Wood biography

Julie Walters will be featuring as part of an all-star cast for the audiobook of Jasper Rees' authorised biography of Victoria Wood, Let's Do It.

Trapeze has promised the audiobook will be "a rich, multi-voice recording narrated by an all-star cast of some of the legendary performers who worked with Victoria over her iconic career". Alongside Walters narrating will be Celia Imrie, Duncan Preston, Susie Blake, Anne Reid, David Threlfall, Daniel Rigby, Jane Wymark, Richenda Carey and Kate Robbins. An introduction will be narrated by Rees himself.

Our Friend Victoria, Episode five, BBC1 review

We keep hearing that there is going to be a League of Gentlemen reunion at some point and there is one - of sorts - in the penultimate instalment of this six-art tribute to Victoria Wood.

Although most of Victoria Wood's work since 1985 had been for the BBC - including her sketch series As Seen on TV and the sitcom dinnerladies - she fell out with the corporation in 2009 when her seasonal specal, All the Trimmings, commissioned for Christmas Day, was dumped in a lesser slot without consultation.

Possibly because of this, only ITV was able to gain access to the writer-comedian's closest colleagues - including Julie Walters, Duncan Preston and Celia Imrie - for Let's Do It: A Tribute to Victoria Wood. There was also a suspicion that, in relation, the BBC might have been mean about releasing clips: there was so little material from dinnerladies and As Seen on TV that the opening titles had to be used as illustration.

Despite smart use of DVDs of stage shows and clps from a 1996 South Bank Show, the talking heads between the extracts adopted the now standard TV obit-show tone of rave about the person in the grave. James Corden explained that "she just made a lot of people laugh". Sir Lenny Henry averred that "she was just brilliant", while Jim Broadbent siad: "You just think, God, what a special person!'"

Attention was rightly paid to Wood's epic comic song, The Ballard of Barry and Freda. But, rather than reference to its double internal rhymes or climactic triple rhymes or the comic effect of domestic detail (lagging, grouting, flameproof nightie), we got a string of celebs calling the song "brilliant" and David Threlfall[/o] declaring: "Is there no end to this woman's talent?" Well, sadly, Dave, yes, there was, which is why an ITV crew is in your dressing room.

The final episode of this amiable comedy drama is nicely bittersweet, and we are left with the feeling that life in the Paradise family will continue to be turbulent, long after the credits have rolled. But, though it's been a good-natured six weeks, I'm not sure I want to see any more. Sometimes, you know, things just end and that's fine.

Pauline Paradise (Alison Steadman) continues to carve a new life away from her dull, lugubrious husband Ken (Duncan Preston). He, in turn, decides he must move on and takes steps to get rid of all traces of his estranged wife, which doesn't go down well with the rest of the family. Meanwhile, horrible, self-obsessed Heather confides her big secret in her nearest and dearest. Uh-oh.

New comedy-drama Love and Marriage starred Alison Steadman as newly retired lollipop lady Pauline. We knew that Pauline was put upon because she was laden down with carrier bags, which also worked as metaphor for her bustling, self-absorbed extended family (including Extras' Ashley Jensen).

Pauline's husband, "Silent Ken" (Duncan Preston), had a face like a wet Wednesday and the conversational skills of undercoat. When he refused to comfort Pauline after her father died, nobody would have blamed her for lunging at him with her lollipop. Instead, Pauline became one of those "silver splitters" beloved of the Daily Mail, leaving Ken to live with her free-spirited sister (Celia Imrie), and declaring: "I'm not going to be a daughter or a wife or a mother any more." There's an audience for the likes of Love and Marriage, but it verged on meandering and urgently needs to pep up. I was left with the feeling that I'd been watching a stellar cast making ham sandwiches for an hour.

"Secrets in a marriage are like dry rot in a house," opines newly retired lollipop lady Pauline Paradise (Alison Steadman) to an off-screen interviewer. Her husband Ken (Duncan Preston), slumped beside her on the sofa in a near-permanent state of catatonic disengagement, concurs.

As do the rest of the extended Paradise family, their homes visited in turn by this shamelessly contrived but extremely convenient narrative device, which throws into stark relief the shared veneer of domestic contentment with the cauldron of deceit, disappointment and dissatisfaction bubbling beneath.

There is - you guessed it - trouble in the Paradises, and ITV's new comedy drama Love and Marriage will be here over the next six weeks to chronicle it.

There were an awful lot of Paradises to introduce, with an awful lot of back stories to establish, so episode one was rather obliged to sacrifice subtlety on the altar of exposition.

When characters weren't sharing information with the camera they were frequently to be found telling each other things they already knew - "You were a top model in the 1970s" - for the benefit of viewers at home. During the first 20 minutes, the top-rate cast waded heroically through a mud slide of explanatory dialogue, with the threat of submersion beneath a wave of audience impatience never more than a line away.

Shortly after the first ad break, however, they hit dry land. The storylines kicked in, the dialogue came alive - "She keeps saying my name as if she's never heard it before and doesn't like the sound of it" - and proceedings began to gather a satisfying pace.

The Paradise clan, we learnt, are beset by a multitude of problems - financial, emotional, domestic, professional, romantic, historic - which they look to matriarch Pauline to either solve or shoulder.

Following the accidental death of her father, the much-put-upon Pauline reassesses her life and rejects all the roles imposed upon her. To everyone's amazement, including her own, she ups sticks, moves in with her racy younger sister and starts telephoning potential new suitors at two o'clock in the morning.

Despite its remorselessly jaunty soundtrack, Love and Marriage explored some sombre themes and was all the more interesting for it. Steadman's performance drives the drama, but she has excellent support from a stellar cast that also includes Ashley Jensen, Larry Lamb and Celia Imrie.

If not quite hooked, I shall stick with the series, if only to find out why the Paradise family's quiz team didn't get a point for correctly identifying The Constant Gardener as Rachel Weisz's Oscar-winning vehicle.

Love and Marriage, ITV's new six-part comedy drama, was about sacrifice. Alison Steadman played Pauline Paradise, a 60-year-old matriarch, who had spent her whole adult life caring for her large family and receiving not-very-much thanks in return.

When she left the house on her last day before retiring, her taciturn husband Ken (Duncan Preston) didn't even look up from his paper. When her father died, he went to bed and hoped she wouldn't want to talk about it. And Pauline and Ken were not the only ones with problems. Their offspring were all in trouble. Kevin, their eldest son, was in debt and newly redundant; Heather, their highly strung daughter, was racing against the biological clock to get pregnant; and Martin, their youngest son, was worn out by the demands of his huge family.

And that's just the "drama" half of this "comedy drama". To squeeze in the humour as well was asking a lot of writer Stewart Harcourt and, on the evidence of the first episode, perhaps a bridge too far. It's difficult to be funny when you're so busy establishing characters and plot (although including a joke about the Manson family, the subject of biting satire forty years ago, was pretty desperate).

So there are grounds for optimism. As we get to know the Paradise clan better, the jokes will hopefully improve. In the meantime, the drama should keep people tuning in.

Alison Steadman and Duncan Preston star as matriarch and patriarch of the Paradise family in this new six-parter about families and all the stuff that comes with them. But things aren't perfect in the Paradise's domestic setup - do you see what they did there? All the kids have gone off and got married and Mrs Paradise sees the yawning chasm between her and her husband. Will she grasp her autumn years in both hands and take them dancing or just carry on as usual? We've got six episodes to find out.

The peerless Alison Steadman walks the line between laughter and tears with aplomb, taking the lead as Pauline Paradise in this six-part comedy drama. Nearing the end of her road as a lollipop lady, Pauline is apprehensive about her looming retirement. But does anyone in her family care that her life is at a crossroads? Not a jot, it seems, with taciturn hubby Ken (Duncan Preston) being, well, taciturn, and her brood of offspring preoccupied with their own lives and rearing assorted infants. It's a Syndicate-style format, with the perspective shifting from one Paradise to another, week by week. The impressive supporting cast includes Celia Imrie, Larry Lamb, Ashley Jensen, Graeme Hawley and Zoe Telford.