James Earl Jones

New Channel 4 comedy The Mimic appears to have been built around the ability of its lead actor, Terry Mynott, to do impressions and there are moments when you wonder whether he provides a solid enough foundation. His Terry Wogan was very wobbly and his David Attenborough was a weird hybrid of Alan Bennett and Ian McKellen. Other impressions are so left-field they have to be visually signposted or cued up by a line of dialogue to make sure we get them.

But there was a promising little sequence as Martin (Mynott's character) sat slumped in front of his television and Morgan Freeman and James Earl Jones fought it out over who was best at adding gravitas to a natural-history programme. It's a comedy of underachievement essentially, complete with marimba noodling on the soundtrack to signal the underlying pathos, but it has some lovely downbeat moments and funny silences where some comedies might strive (unsuccessfully) for a big guffaw. Look out for Jo Hartley as Martin's friend Jean too. She's very good, so quietly you might miss it.

Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent, 14th March 2013

For a sitcom, this is at the loose, gentle end of the spectrum. There aren't many out-and-out gags, it's filmed on location, there's no laughter track - if it were an hour long, you'd call it a comedy drama.

Our sort-of-hero is Martin (Terry Mynott), who has a dead-end job doing site maintenance for a drugs company (called, cheekily, CelPharm). When we meet Martin, he's in a traffic jam, amusing himself with a scabrous impression of Terry Wogan ("It's mornings like this, I wish I was back in Phuket bouncing a ladyboy on each knee...") and we soon gather that this is Martin's Walter Mitty-style escape.

He may be a man adrift, but his impression of Morgan Freeman arguing with James Earl Jones is uncanny (his Ronnie Corbett less so). What threatens to shake up Martin's world is learning he may have a son he has never met. That's if the DNA test pans out...

David Butcher, Radio Times, 13th March 2013