Ellie White

TV: Semi-Detached, BBC2

After his foray into live sitcom with Not Going Out just before Christmas Lee Mack is back in sitcomland with this all-star fast-paced one-off pilot in which the twist is that everything happens in real time.

Semi-Detached review

The first sitcom pilot of the year stars Lee Mack in this real-time story set over one man's terrible half-hour (although the pilot's only 20 minutes long).

Semi-Detached review

There may be questions over whether the furious pace can be sustained for the extra 50 per cent running time required for the traditional BBC sitcom half-hour. Or indeed whether such maelstroms of mayhem can be conjured up week after week. But this is a promising germ for that holy grail of comedy commissioners everywhere: a mainstream suburban sitcom that doesn't suck.

The Windsors Royal Wedding Special review

Bert Tyler-Moore and George Jeffrie's ruthless comedy is a reminder that you can get away with a lot as long as you are funny.

A wickedly witty send up but are the Windsors watching?

This Royal Wedding special was bursting with ideas like a box of exploding confetti.

Ellie White: 'Can you be jealous of a book? I am'

The Windsors star and character comic on the things that make her laugh the most, from Cold Comfort Farm to Basil the Great Mouse Detective.

The Other One, assuredly a pilot looking for a commission, written by the fab comedian Holly Walsh, was an unlooked-for delight, a fresh and wildly enjoyable half-hour about a just-dead charmer of a bigamist who turns out to have fathered two very-alive daughters, Cathy and Cat. Middle-middle-class Cathy has already downloaded all the TED talks on coping with grief; decidedly non-posh Cat, who's "this summer, finally completed Tinder", decidedly hasn't. They bond nevertheless, in new-found daughterdom and in wry grief.

Siobhan Finneran as one of the mums displays an unexpected and gleeful surefootedness for comedy, but the breakout find is Ellie White (Beatrice in The Windsors) who, as Cathy, dominates every scene with her subtly tremendous mix of unspoken class-horror, and kindness, and just-naughty-enoughness. I'm already a little in love. Expect - hope for, fervently - that commission, and an (equally deserved) run on the back-catalogue of Supertramp.

Preview - The Other One

While BBC One has been busy with its Comedy Playhouse season of pilots, BBC Two has now beginning showing pilots too.

Written by sometime Sharon Horgan collaborator Holly Walsh, this sitcom pilot acts as a showcase for four brilliant, but often underserved, comic talents: Ellie White, Lauren Socha, Siobhan Finneran and Rebecca Front. The former two play sisters - one posh, one not - who only discover each other's existence after their father dies suddenly. Tension is inevitable, but it's nothing a Supertramp singalong won't soothe. Here's hoping for a full series.