Imelda Staunton

If You See God, Tell Him box set review

After a bump on the head Briers' Godfrey Spry believes he has to do exactly what the adverts say - with often disastrous results.

Victoria Wood attends TV version of That Day We Sang

The comedy star headed to the Vue Cinema at Salford Quays for preview of the BBC production starring Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton.

Pride review - power in an unlikely union

Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton and George MacKay sparkle in this tale of lesbian and gay activists' support for the miners' strike.

Up the Garden Path (Radio 4 Extra, 7.00am; repeated 5.30pm) is a welcome repeat of Sue Limb's comedy, starring Imelda Staunton as Izzy . It comes from the era when BBC TV looked down on BBC radio and missed, therefore, the chance to grab it. It went instead to Granada TV, establishing both author and lead actress. Her latest, the brilliant Gloomsbury, will return to Radio 4 this year.

The last time R&B superstar Rihanna was on a Jonathan Ross chat show, back in December 2009, the host compared her low-cut dress to a curtain. Hopefully Ross will behave a little more suavely tonight as he talks to the Barbadian about her current musical projects and her appearance alongside Liam Neeson in a soon-to-be-released Hollywood blockbuster called Battleship. Further down the bill, there's an interview with Lionel Richie, while Imelda Staunton and Michael Ball will discuss their popular revival of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeny Todd, currently showing in the West End.

Radio Times review

The 37th best TV show of 2011 according to the Radio Times.

Manna for lovers of the macabre - a shudder one minute, a cackle the next. Series two had no qualms about meting out grisly ends to its lead personae, at a rate of roughly one bloodbath per episode. At least psycho-mum Maureen got to appal us all with her terrifying Tina Turner karaoke before carking it. Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton invested even their vilest creations with flashes of pathos; new to this run were extreme fag hag Hattie, shackling a gay Iranian man in her boudoir, and beyond-anal librarian Jeremy Goode, haunted by the Silent Singer. Add to the brew a glam Imelda Staunton, Eileen Atkins at her most severe and a cameo from cult horror director John Landis, and this show left you scared and scarred.

"I hate London. It's full of weirdos," says Mr Jelly, arriving at St Pancras station with Mrs Ladybird-Face and the head of a Nazi in an icebox. The tone is set for a superb finale that delivers on every count. It's hilarious, audacious, gruesome; the villains you loathe get their comeuppance, and villains you love may live to fight another day... While David Sowerbutts finds love at his lowest ebb and Jeremy Goode succumbs to the Silent Singer, events centre round company Andrews-nanotech and its director Grace (glammed up Imelda Staunton). At last she takes possession of the series' MacGuffin - Kenchington's locket. It's hard to guess where Psychoville can go from here, but let's hope the warped brilliance of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith will find a way.

It's the big day for Hattie as her sham wedding to her BF's boyfriend Shahrouz gets under way. But has she really understood the "sham" part? Elsewhere, the Sowerbutts have their first dinner party in years, Mr Jelly tries his hand at a pub gig, and the sinister Grace Andrews (Imelda Staunton) keeps plotting. Good to have them back: where else will you find jokes about Capricorn One, serial killers and Martine McCutcheon together?

"No loose ends, remember, Kelvin," warns the sleek Imelda Staunton character in the opener to the horror-com's second series. It's a cheeky line from a show whose plotting has more loose ends than a fringed lampshade, and rather than trying to follow it, it's simpler to thrill to the loathsome sight gags and haunting characters lovingly assembled by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton. There's Mr Jelly the embittered clown; Joy, the deluded midwife with a doll for a child; blind toy collector Mr Lomax; and serial killer David Sowerbutts - with his charming mum. They all somehow survived the explosion at the end of series one, though not Mr Jelly's arch-rival Mr Jolly, whose funeral (attended by a parade of glum clowns) kicks off the episode. Psychoville's unsettling tone is unlike anything else on TV and as well as big laughs there are big, nasty shocks.

Just as with The League Of Gentlemen, Psychoville's best moments are always the lower level tragedies. No matter what they throw at you in terms of stabbings, explosions, horror film tropes, it's never the big moments that chill or disgust you, it's the small things - the moments when Imelda Staunton purses her lips - that send a shiver down your spine. What other show would have an angry librarian turn so horrific?

There's a strange pretension-free ambition that makes Psychoville so much fun to watch. There are really awful cheap gags mixed among moments that take weeks, if not years to set up. Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton mug it up, but they're allowed to get away with it because of the deadpan way the rest of the cast, such as the brilliant Tea Leaf, play around in their sick world. Really, really good.