Helen Monks

Raised By Wolves: saluting a hugely likeable sitcom

As Raised By Wolves concludes its ace second series on Channel 4, we tip our caps to a cleverly written sitcom...

Helen Monks's favourite TV

The Raised By Wolves actor on her TV loves and loathes, from Broad City to Made In Chelsea.

Caz and Caitlin Moran's excellent and highly quotable comedy returns to the Garry household for a second series, and 16-year-old Germaine (Helen Monks) is still banging on about her bodily functions to all and sundry. After mum Della (Rebekah Staton) switches off the wi-fi ("I'm not paying £29.99 a month to beam pixels through the friggin' air"), the Garry children slope off to the library, where Germaine's flirting practice leads to the unimaginable: an actual date. She preps for it by dousing her wrists in her own vaginal fluid.

Helen Monks on 'Raised by Wolves'

If you thought Raised by Wolves'was riotous, wait till you hear . As the sitcom returns to Channel 4, its star Helen Monks gives Gerard Gilbert the lowdown.

"Right, let's do some parenting, then," maintains formidable mother-of-six Della in Caroline and Caitlin Moran's perky sitcom, based on the sisters' home-schooled childhood in Wolverhampton. The script is smart and tangy but it's the sprightly acting that makes this Channel 4 comedy zing, especially from the always excellent Rebekah Staton as the straight-talking Della (she's claims to have channelled Clint Eastwood for the role), Helen Monks as quick-witted Germaine and Alexa Davies as cerebral Aretha.

Series one of Caitlin and Caz Moran's loosely autobiographical sitcom about the unorthodox Garry brood bows out. Desperate to corner newly single Lee, Germaine (Helen Monks) enlists her sisters - misanthropic Aretha (Alexa Davies) and meek Yoko (Molly Risker) - for a night out at an infamous Wolverhampton club. Cue fake incest, silly scheming and a boy-themed revelation for Germaine. Elsewhere, mum Della (Rebekah Staton) has an unconventional date with the suitor she met at Uncle Natie's barbecue.

Channel 4 were hoping to replicate the success of the brilliant Catastrophe with their newest sitcom Raised by Wolves.

The comedy comes courtesy of renowned columnist and award-winning writer Caitlin Moran who created the series alongside her sister Caroline. The siblings based the show on their upbringing in Wolverhampton and are represented respectively by free-spirited Germaine (Helen Monks) and the much more sensible Aretha (Alexa Davies). Germaine and Aretha are two of the six children of Della (Rebekah Staton); the comedy's ballsy matriarch who named her daughters after strong female role models.

Although Raised by Wolves purports to be set in the present day, a fact we are aware of early on when the girl's Grampy (Philip Jackson) is on a laptop, most of what we see in the show seems very old fashioned. The characters of Aretha and Germaine especially don't feel part of the 21st century as the clothing they wear makes them seem like they belong in the late 1980s or early 1990s. This is probably because the Moran sisters have styled the characters to look exactly how they did in their formative years.

This odd mix of old style with modern setting meant I could never fully relax into Raised by Wolves; which is a shame as it did have some highlights.

The best thing about Raised by Wolves was definitely Staton's strong comic turn as the brilliant Della who I absolutely loved from the first time she appeared on screen. Jackson also proved to be a skilled comic presence whose scenes as the horny grandfather brilliantly broke up the action. However I personally wasn't impressed by the performances given by the younger actresses which may be partially due to the fact that their characters never really struck a chord with me.

Maybe I'm judging Raised by Wolves too soon and I'll definitely keep watching to see if there's any improvement in the forthcoming weeks. However, as I've often been a fan of Moran's writing, I expected more from a comedy that wasn't nearly as funny as it thought it was.

A good week for Channel 4, actually. Caitlin Moran, who will soon surely be so well known she can go about being known by just her first name (just so's you know, the opening syllable is "Cat", as in "cat", not "Kate", for befuddling but I seem to remember nice reasons), has again given us something good, in addition to journalism and her runaway bestseller, How to Be a Woman, in the shape of a highly moreish comedy.

Raised By Wolves, essentially the story of her own Wolverhampton childhood and co-written with her sister Caz, aims to celebrate that relentlessly ignored televisual beast, the witty and bright working class. It won't be to absolutely everyone's taste - bigots who like to lump the poor under the adjective "feckless", thickos who like their humour less subtle, that distinct super-breed of men who still think lady-periods unmentionable - but it was very sweet, will get even funnier, and is crackling with talent to celebrate, in young Helen Monks and Alexa Davies and this opener's standout star, Pulling's Rebekah Staton. I worry only that the trend, in both broadcasting and newspapers, is increasingly biased these happy days against female writers who are a) terrifyingly bright and funny, and b) technically below the salt, in terms of privileged ability to fund themselves through three-year internships for sod-all pay. Thank goodness historically, then, for Caitlin, for Julie Burchill, for our own Barbara Ellen, but shall we see many of their likes again?

The teenage girls living in the council house in Wolverhampton in Raised By Wolves (Channel 4, Monday) are a bracing breath of fresh air. If you saw the 2013 pilot you'll know what to expect; this semi-autobiographical sitcom about growing up in the 1980s is written by Caitlin Moran, the journalist and How to Be a Woman author, and Caroline Moran, her comedy-writing sister.

There's Germaine/Caitlin (played by Helen Monks), a stroppy 16-year-old sex-fixated extrovert; Aretha/Caz (Alexa Davies), her sarcastic, world-weary sidekick sister; and a gaggle of smaller children, "the babbies", in a chaotic bookish household headed by Della (Rebekah Staton), their no-nonsense mum.

Now commissioned for a series (under its Irish director, Ian FitzGibbon) and set in the present day, the first episode is mostly about Yoko getting her period, necessitating a family outing to "the aisle of shame" at Boots. "I don't think I want to be a woman, Mum," says Yoko as Germaine - she really is annoying - gleefully piles on the bloody (and hilarious) horror stories. "Nobody does, love, but the men are too chicken shit to handle it, so here we are," says Mum.

The girls love their movies and literary references, and inevitably, in their nonconformist clothes - Germaine channels Helena Bonham Carter - they're bullied. "There are CCTV cameras everywhere, you know," warns Aretha as a yob tries to steal her scarf. "George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four was entirely prescient."

They talk like this all the time. The only out-of-sync element punctuating the knowing dialogue and girl-power capers is a cheesy subplot involving Grandad, in his fluffy robe, getting prepped to seduce Granny over a pot of beef bourguignon that seems to have wandered in from a 1980s sitcom.

In just about every interview with Caitlin Moran, Wolverhampton - her birthplace and the setting for Raised By Wolves - is referred to in a way that suggests it's a British shorthand for cultural sinkhole. But Della, who is fond of a pithy life lecture when she's not blithely ignoring the kids, explains, "We're not northern twats, we're not southern twats, we're midlands twats." If you were ever a teenage girl - or, better still, have one - this is refreshingly honest and occasionally laugh-out-loud stuff.

Radio Times review

Caitlin Moran's modern-day sitcom inspired by her early life in Wolverhampton (co-written with her sister Caroline) finally arrives for a full series. And the Garry clan have lost none of their eccentricity, curiosity, honesty and ebullience since the Christmas 2013 pilot. Like all good comedies it creates its own world and language, though the closest analogy would be to a female-heavy Shameless (albeit where our heroine ends up with a column on The Times).

The Caitlin character is Germaine (Helen Monks), a spiky, idealistic dreamer dressed like a punked-up cross between Helena Bonham Carter and 1984-era Madonna (the pop star, not the mother of God).

There are other enjoyable turns from Rebekah Staton as forthright, smart, wisecracking mum Della, whose advice always seems spot-on, and Philip Jackson's Grampy. He's the only significant male, but his character is totally at home in this oestrogen-heavy working-class wonderland.