Harry Venning

The Stage Review

I sat through Coming Of Age with the will to live seeping from my every pore, leaving me drenched in a puddle of despair. Apparently writer Tim Dawson was 19 when he wrote it, which is about six years older than I would have guessed.

The Stage Review

That Sunshine succeeds so effectively as both comedy and drama is down to a witty and original script by Craig Cash and Phil Mealey combined with a very impressive performance from Coogan, who manages to strike just the right note between amiable and infuriating, amusing and appalling.

Indeed, Sunshine is so well done that it is almost too painful to watch, and it's going to require something of an act of will from me to return for a further helping of Bob's wilful self-destruction. The jokes and great lines certainly come thick and fast, but the underlying mood is one of despair with just a hint of impending doom.

Review in The Stage

The humour is gentle rather than hysterical, but the jokes are clever, unforced and in plentiful supply. Great performances too, particularly from its young stars Luke Ward-Wilkinson as Simon and Layton Williams as Kyle, aka Kylie.

Apart from some transatlantic locations and a couple of new accents, Little Britain USA was mostly more of the same old jokes recycled. Which isn't entirely a bad thing, familiarity breeding contentment among the modern sketch show audience.

Filing clerks Danny (Ralf Little) and Shay (Carl Rice) share a long cherished dream to run their own record company. Danny's gran dies, leaving him £10,000, and before she is cold in her grave they have set up Shady Music. Their first job is to recruit talent to the label and what better way than to hold a Battle of the Bands night?

All this occurs within the first ten minutes of Massive, cutting to the chase with commendable brevity. Nothing kills a new sitcom quicker than a wade through exposition in episode one.

And to its credit, Massive succeeds in keeping up a cracking pace for its full 30 minutes. We see the pair bicker over their musical tastes, strut around in their new capacity as entrepreneurs, rent rat-infested offices and stop at bus stops to ask Jim Morrison lookalikes if they can sing.

It's all very entertaining and good-natured, with several good moments. Little and Rice work well with each other, and Johnny Vegas is on hand to lend comic support as Shay's kleptomaniac dad. Actually, I think I may have seen a bit too much of Vegas lately, which is ironic since he's clearly lost a lot of weight.

No Heroics is a very British take on the superhero genre, largely set in a pub called The Fortress, where the city's caped crusaders gather after a hard day's crime fighting. The pub, however, has two rules that it strictly enforces - no use of special powers or wearing of costumes on the premises.

This would appear to defeat the whole object of the sitcom exercise, but the show is actually enhanced by its self-imposed limitations, directing it towards more character-based comedy. Off-duty the superheroes wear business suits and ties, and actively engage in a canteen culture of sexism, homophobia, preening and bullying, inviting comparison with City bankers at their macho worst. The format makes for quite edgy and uncomfortable comedy, but still offers the opportunity for broader, more slapstick silliness when the heroes leave the confines of the pub and enter the outside world.

I think No Heroics is very promising indeed and would possibly have enjoyed it even more if I had spotted the many superhero in-jokes that my comic book-obsessed friends assure me are peppered throughout the show.

I have a deep and abiding love for Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, but the first series of Harry and Paul left me deeply underwhelmed. It had its moments, but I was left with the feeling that the pair were trading upon their reputations.

So rejoice to the news that series two is clever, inventive, imaginative, frequently inspired and the funniest programme currently on TV.

Their Dragon's Den pastiche in episode one was fabulous, but even greater joys were to come the following week with the Liverpool Capital of Culture running gag which saw various giants of the performing arts - including Matthew Bourne, Simon Rattle - conduct sweaty, Steven Gerrard style post-match interviews.

I let me baton do the talking. Cheers! droned Rattle, in thickest Scouse, before snatching a bottle of celebratory champagne and departing mid-question.

With the glut of sketch shows currently clogging up the schedules, it takes something special to stand out from the crowd. School of Comedy achieves this triumphantly by handing over adult material to adolescent performers.

Yes, I know, it sounds an appalling idea. But the confidence, talent and professionalism of the cast quickly dispels all suspicions of gimmickry or fears of on-screen stage school precocity run rampant. Instead, the use of young actors brings a genuine freshness to a tired old format and introduces several new faces to watch out for. It is, of course, totally unfair on an ensemble cast to single out personal favourites, so I shall resist. Suffice to say, Will Poulter and Lily Ainsworth, you know who you are.

Pity poor Sinead Moynihan. Okay, don't pity her too much, because she's drop dead gorgeous and clearly in demand as an actor. But it must have been galling to get the second lead in sitcom How Not to Live Your Life, only to discover that the full extent of your contribution would be to look pretty and provide a sensible foil to the show's writer/star Dan Clark. Would it have killed Clark to throw the show's only female character the occasional funny line to deliver?

This grump notwithstanding, I rather like How Not to Live Your Life. Clark stars as the self-centred, cheerfully odious Don, who inherits his grandmother's house, the debts that come with it and her live-in carer. By a twist of sitcom fate, his advert for a lodger is answered by his childhood sweetheart Abby (Moynihan), who unfortunately comes with boyfriend in tow.

Episode one was something of a slow starter, but the show hit its stride by episode two which saw child-hating Dan try and impress schoolteacher Abby by accompanying her and her class on a camping trip.

Clark's unorthodox delivery, combined with Dan's almost wilful unloveability, takes some getting used to, but this is consistently amusing, frequently hilarious and totally addictive.

The Cup borrows the fly on the wall documentary format that served The Office so well and inevitably suffers by comparison. The Cup totally lacks the necessary subtlety or deft comic touch.

What it does have, however, is invention, great characters and an uninterrupted procession of really funny jokes.