Fay Ripley

Fay Ripley confirms return of Cold Feet

After months of rumours, Fay Ripley has confirmed the revival of ITV series Cold Feet.

This hospital sitcom is half joke-fest, half soap opera, as if a team of American gag-writers had taken over Holby City. There isn't a wasted word. If you enjoy rat-a-tat one-liners, the way Friends and Roseanne were written, The Delivery Man will win you over.

The stories are set in a maternity wing where Matthew, an improbably handsome male midwife (Darren Boyd), has set all the women's hormones raging.

His boss (Fay Ripley) is throwing herself at him, his co-worker (Aisling Bea) is flirting like a stoat on heat, and even the expectant mums look ready to dump their husbands and waddle away with him.

After three episodes, we really need to know who Matthew will end up bedding. And that means we'll have to keep watching every week, because ITV weren't stupid enough to give away the whole series in advance.

If you want to binge-watch The Delivery Man, you'll have to wait till the end of the series. Or better still, treat yourself to half-an-hour each Wednesday. What's wrong with doing it the old way?

Paparazzi descend on Easthill Park hospital when Comfort Evans, ditzy star of reality TV show SHAG ("Sussex Hunks and Girlfriends"), pops in for an optimistically incognito pregnancy checkup. It doesn't take long for copper-turned-midwife Matthew (Darren Boyd) to get roped into a campaign to put the press corps off the scent. If ITV's maternity-ward sitcom can feel a little underwritten, a game cast - notably Boyd, Fay Ripley and Pompidou escapee Alex Macqueen - enhance the farce as best they can.

I was slightly hopeful going into The Delivery Man primarily as director Victoria Pile created Green Wing whilst writers Robert Harley and James Henry also worked on the classic Channel 4 sitcom. Unfortunately, The Delivery Man has none of the surreal wit or classic characters of Green Wing and instead feels like it's been lifted from the 1970s. The central premise of The Delivery Man sees another Green Wing veteran in Darren Boyd play Matthew, a newly qualified midwife attempting to navigate his way through a female-dominated environment. I think I would've had more time for The Delivery Man if Matthew had proved his female colleagues wrong by proving himself to be a valuable member of the team and changing their expectations of him. But instead he was presented as a bumbling fool who was constantly lying to his patients, their families and the rest of the hospital staff whilst struggling with the simplest of tasks. Whilst watching The Delivery Man I kept wondering what would've happened if their was a sitcom about a bumbling woman entering a male-dominated environment and doing a really bad job. I personally think there would be a general outcry but nobody appeared to bat an eyelid when that was the central joke of the piece. A potential romance between Matthew and fellow midwife Lisa (Aisling Bea) already has little interest whilst the supporting characters all feel a little one-dimensional. This is a shame when the cast includes such heavyweights as Alex MacQueen and Fay Ripley, the latter of whom at least tried her best as well-meaning senior midwife Caitlin. The biggest problem though was that The Delivery Man didn't provoke a sufficient amount of laughter from yours truly. In fact the only real laugh I had was during a joke about Claire's Accessories whilst a scene involving a birthing pool also raised a brief titter. Ultimately I was disappointed with a programme that felt like it had been severely watered down by ITV who seem to favour the sort of broad humour which The Delivery Man had in droves.

Radio Times review

"I have had the same training as all the women," protests Darren Boyd's male midwife Matthew, a bloke in a very female-centred environment. In Green Wing writers Robert Harley and James Henry's old-fashioned comedy he has to cope with quite a lot of sexism, but doesn't help himself by being quite an irritant, which detracts a little from a sitcom packed with decent lines and excellent supporting stars (Fay Ripley and Aisling Bea among them).

There is also little sense of Matthew's back story - apart from the fact he used to be a policeman - although the signs are that we will be seeing a lot more of Paddy McGuinness as his even more annoying (and slightly unhinged) former colleague and flatmate.

Strong cast star in new comedy from Green Wing team

Fortitude's Darren Boyd takes on a very different role as he is joined by Fay Ripley, Paddy McGuinness and Aisling Bea for new sitcom.

Special delivery: Fay Ripley stars in a new ITV series

"My character is head over heels for Matthew," explains Fay, 49. ""For her sake, I hope it goes somewhere, but she is slightly deluded."

Radio Times review

Sometimes this celebrity whinge party gets up a head of comic steam. The mix of guests doesn't always gel but when it does - as here - you feel as if you're eavesdropping on a heated chat in a pub full of famous people.

In this episode that means Gary Lineker, Jack Dee and Fay Ripley offering up their personal peeves: Dee hates white vans and hand dryers; Lineker hates internet trolls; Ripley hates jeggings - and people who tell the truth.

In railing against "people who tell it like it is" Ripley includes a nice story of meeting up with an actress she used to work with, whose deflating first words were "Oh Fay! Oh my God, how we've all aged!"

Fay Ripley: Cold Feet reunion out

"I would do it but only if they paid for a face lift and a tummy tuck," she laughs.

Cold Feet will not be returning says star Fay Ripley

The cast of the classic millennium drama series have finally called time on attempts to revive it, says its star Fay Ripley.