Gina McKee

The BBC currently seems unwilling to countenance comedy with any sharp edges - this returning domestic sitcom is fine as far as it goes, but remains very much in the tradition of gentle family shows like Gavin & Stacey. The series opens at Betty's funeral - it's a convenient way of bringing the wider family together in one place so that scenes can be set and minor beefs amplified.

Kimberley Nixon's Sarah is pregnant and stressed, Pauline (Gina McKee) is somewhat put-upon and Joe (Jim 'Vic Reeves' Moir) is still recovering slowly from his stroke. The performances are very likeable and Jason Cook's writing occasionally hints at some turbulence beneath the surface. But generally, this is affirmative and big-hearted, but also predictable and passive to a fault.

This North East-set sitcom bows out tonight with a wedding-themed episode, giving rise to hackneyed jokes about ugly bridesmaids' outfits and warring mothers-in-law. Hebburn aims for Gavin & Stacey-style provincial quirkiness with a bit of Royle Family vulgarity thrown in, but hasn't quite found an original voice, and settled for warm-hearted predictability instead. Gina McKee, as tough cookie matriarch Pauline, has been the best thing about it.

Jason Cook's Geordie sitcom is hardly at the cutting edge of comedy, tending to loiter somewhere around the periphery of The Royle Family/Gavin & Stacey section of the genre. But its heart is in the right place, and Gina McKee and Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves) give well-judged performances that are a delight. This week the clueless Jack demonstrates how not to behave at a job interview, while mum Pauline explains why it's important Jack and Sarah move out of the cramped family home. "They need their own space or they'll end up like apes in the zoo wandering round in circles flinging their poo about," she says. Nice.

Gina McKee interview

Gina McKee - she of the alabaster skin and cool demeanour - is silent on her private life and lets her acting speak for itself. But the thought of Julia Roberts' trousers, or critical acclaim, makes our elegant heroine quite flustered, as Gerard Gilbert discovers.

Hebburn came into its own as McKee took centre stage

Hebburn is proving to be a richly layered and beautifully observed comment on family life and with Gina McKee taking centre stage tonight, this new sitcom couldn't do much wrong.

Hebburn is that rare thing, a good, warm, funny new sitcom. This is tempting fate, but it may remind you of another romcom about a young couple and their families. Yes, the sacred memory that is Gavin & Stacey. It has the same director for a start, and writer Jason Cook knows how to make characters big but believable.

This week, Pauline (Gina McKee) is still angry at Jack for getting married without telling her, while Joe (Jim Moir) has a plan to win her round. Look out for a lovely, understated sight gag involving a fist bump, and some vicious comedy in Dot's old people's home.

Although presented in an affectionate guise, the basic idea in Hebburn is that they're a bit dim in the north east. It starred Chris Ramsey and a highly cuffable haircut as Jack, a journalist returning to his hometown with his new wife, Sarah (Kimberley Nixon).

Hebburn, Jack told Sarah, is "where dreams come to die". That's not a bad proposition, comedy-wise, but unfortunately, Hebburn turned out on closer inspection to be the place where jokes go to die.

The one about Sarah's Jewishness sending the locals into a state of anxious cultural confusion took a particularly long and painful time to expire. It started with Jack's mum (Gina McKee) cutting holes in sandwich baps to serve them as bagels, and went on from there without going anywhere.

As Jack's father, Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves) was a curiously detached presence, as though he had decided to keep very quiet in the conviction that no one would notice it was him. No doubt this was admirable self-restraint, but how much more entertaining things would have been if he had turned to his screen wife McKee during the bagel saga and in his biggest Big Night Out accent shouted: "You wouldn't let it lie!"

Paddy Shennan's TV review: Hebburn (BBC2)

New sitcom Hebburn (BBC2, Thursday) was taking its time to warm up when, eight minutes in, the first killer line arrived. And, somehow, when I heard the mum, Pauline Pearson (Gina McKee), ask the question of her son's new wife, Sarah (Kimberley Nixon), I knew everything was going to be OK.

Radio Times review

If you sat down in front of BBC2's new sitcom Hebburn (Thursdays) wanting to be annoyed by another portrayal of common people as naïve oddballs, it didn't completely let you down. Fresh Meat star Kimberley Nixon was Sarah, the new wife of Jack (Chris Ramsey), who'd left the north-east to become a journalist but was now back to introduce his bride. His family cheerily struggled to cope with Sarah being posh, Jewish (Jack's mum threw their bacon in the bin and turned baps into bagels with an apple corer) and southern (her parents live in York).

Basically it was an extended version of the scene in The Royle Family where Anthony brings home Emma the vegetarian, and Nanna asks, "Can she have wafer-thin ham?" But what the Hebburn lot also share with the Royles is feeling warm and real. Jason Cook's script was particularly thoughtful when drawing Jack's parents, and was backed by a double casting coup: the faultless Gina McKee in a rare comic role as the hysterically proud mum, and Jim Moir/Vic Reeves, as good here as he was in Eric & Ernie as a dad who took five minutes to emerge from the kitchen when the son he adores came home. He looked happiest when Jack cracked a bad joke that could have been one of his.

Cook hasn't smashed any paradigms - Hebburn's first episode built predictably, if skilfully, to a standard sitcom finale - but he's writing about his own home town, with love. The people and relationships weren't common, but universal.

Review: Borderline insulting but a very funny sitcom

Hebburn may well insult the residents of the real-life northern town, but this new sitcom, starring Gina McKee and Jim Moir, could win even them over with its unique charm.