Jason Watkins

It was mainly business as usual on Friday Night Dinner with more calamity for the family who just can't seem to have a quite meal together. This week's comedy of errors saw Paul Ritter's fantastic patriarch invite round his old uni friend to dinner however it later became clear that he'd got mixed up the two Tonys that he went to university with. Instead of inviting round the guy who he had a lot in common with he was lumbered with Jason Watkins' unfunny bore whom he tried to get rid of by telling a rather whopping lie. Just like prior episodes of the sitcom, this episode of Friday Night Dinner played out like a mini-farce which ended with a big gag that I for one didn't find in the least bit amusing. In my opinion Friday Night Dinner is at its best when we just see the family engage in witty interplay as I feel the core cast have developed some fine chemistry over the past four series. However it's when events get too far-fetched that Friday Night Dinner loses its way and after watching the series four opener it feels that Robert Popper's comedy has run out of ideas. The problem with Friday Night Dinner is that the entire premise shackles the characters to the same setting every episode meaning that Popper has to find increasingly outlandish things to happen to the family which just don't ring true.

Review: Friday Night Dinner, C4

There is nothing particularly groundbreaking here. Just a lovely, well-observed, faintly farcical fast-moving storyline as one minor white lie - they claim Jackie's mother has died so that they can cancel dinner and turf Tony out - sends events spiralling out of control.

Jason Watkins admits he had "reservations" about remake

Jason Watkins is admitting that he had "reservations" about starring in the BBC's Are You Being Served? remake.

Radio Times review

It's "Black" Christmas Eve at the discount supermarket Valco: as well as bargains being snapped up by hordes of feral shoppers, there are new and familiar faces in the sitcom that attracts top-quality comic actors, then doesn't do quite enough with them. Gavin (Jason Watkins) has become a Scrooge-like hard man, denying his staff a party and prowling around for vulnerable team members he can corral into working on Christmas Day. Will the return of Julie (Jane Horrocks), the tender guidance of rival store manager Cheryl (Sarah Parish) or the arrival of mysterious head-office enforcer Frank (Richard Wilson) lead to a softening of his spirit?

It's nearly Christmas at Valco and fruit-recognition training is in full swing, while a poisonous spider is on the loose. In the second of the double bill, the supermarket's staff celebrate its birthday in 1960s fancy dress as the series bows out. There are some real gems in the ensemble cast, most notably Jason Watkins and Sarah Parish playing out Gavin's bittersweet romance with rival supermarket manager Cheryl in the store's freezer. Trollied is from the Stella school of comedy: not always hilarious, but gently watchable.

This is the start of Trollied's fifth series. It's a sitcom set in a fictional supermarket called Valco which has the slogan "SERVES YOU RIGHT!"

I'd never watched it before - Sky1's comedy rarely tempts me - so I was pleasantly surprised to see so many famous faces in it, including Jason Watkins whom I'd last seen in the brilliant ITV drama about Christopher Jefferies. He's joined by Sarah Parrish, Stephen Tompkinson and another actor, playing the store security guard, whom I recognised but just couldn't place till it suddenly hit me: he was in Bread. That's a blast from the past!

The episodes opens with bad news: a new supermarket is opening next door and it's "one of them dead cheap Yugoslavian places" whose name translates as, "we're all gonna lose our jobs."

It annoyed me that the checkout staff are all simpletons or overweight, whilst the middle-class management are impeccably groomed and tailored, but I had to shrug off thoughts of exploitation of the workers and remind myself it's a comedy - although there weren't many reminders of its comic status with jokes such as, "Can you tell me where I can find eggs?". "Chickens," comes the reply.

Jason Watkins about work and the death of his child

Jason Watkins, who stars in BBC sitcom W1A, explains why he's determined to create good memories for his family.

There exists a comedians' in-joke, only very slightly up its own jacksie, in which one asks: "What's the secret of good com..." only to have the second interrupt with the shout: "Timing!" But that is, indeed, the very singular secret of comedy, timing, and W1A, in its second outing, gets it just-so, in the same way that there is only one just-so way in which to shoot cuffs, tap dance slowly, play Chopin or excise a pineocytoma.

Writer and director John Morton has, admittedly, the best of sublime comedy talent to work with. Hugh Bonneville, Nina Sosanya, Jessica Hynes, Jason Watkins. But he has, in this crammed hour, not only to re-thumbnail the personalities with a wizard's thumb but get the timing beyond reproach. To this end, the entire cast are apparently "invited" to spend up to seven hours rehearsing 10 seconds of rapid-fire dialogue. I'm sure the above four could improvise delightfully - been lucky enough to meet two of them, one over drinks after a funeral, another over an extremely fun lunch, and what different people they are, thus what fine actors - but the Morton gene calls for just-so, and the BBC, bravely risking much to rip the ferret out of itself in this wince-out-loud comedy, acceded, in what may well become its finest confection since Fawlty Towers.

Thus, for instance, the five just-so bollards. In more minor hands, the sequence in which the black Range Rover of HRH, an (unseen) Charles, is stymied at the entrance to New Broadcasting House, inside which the welcoming committee have become hogtied by their own insane security protocols, could have been simple farce. The anti-terrorist bollards would just have jumped up and down or spiked Charlie's RR in the sump. Instead, Dave (Andrew Brooke), head of Beeb security, aided only by a ridiculous smartphone and the meaningless catchphrase "we are status-active", manages with a stoic glower to "relent" bollards 2 and 4. And then, in quiet desperation, Nos 1, 3 and 5. There is a full nine-second pause. All bollards down. Then bollard 3 reappears, like a giant erection (as if there's any other kind).

There is glorious timing here, yes, but there's also humanity. Was I alone in quietly cheering whip-smart Lucy (Sosanya) in being the first to make it to the royal meet-and-greet, having left the three witches trapped in their own personalities and also a non-revolving revolving door? Or in feeling, admittedly slightly, a twitch sorry for Will, the good-looking, charming intern with the kind of shoe-size IQ even a mother would struggle to love? If you didn't see it, I just feel for you. Do so. David Tennant's perky voiceovers, dry as sandblasted Ryvita, are worth the licence fee alone.