Jennifer Saunders

Madonna's lifetime Ab Fab ban

Madonna will never be allowed to appear on Absolutely Fabulous even if she wanted to, according to the show's creator Jennifer Saunders.

Eight weeks into her term and with her lawyer unwittingly working against her and fiancé entirely intentionally seducing her sister, Helen still labours under the misapprehension that people on the outside care about her when it's really her fellow inmates who are willing to put themselves on the line for her. Although Top Dog's newly defected but long defective posse prove to be of limited use as she resolves to fight her own cause. Some crafty sight gags and game performances (especially Jennifer Saunders in the Matt Berry role of the psychologically suspect big cheese) aside, Dead Boss is still pulling its punches a little, lacking the iron-fist-in-velvet-glove smarts of Porridge while pulling back from the sort of genuine depravity that could really mark it out. Enjoyable enough, though.

The murder case rumbles on, and suspicion begins to spread through Entirely Tiles as Mrs Bridges' reign of non-Nespresso terror continues. Mary uses her unlikely "very sensitive bitch-dar" to probe the lottery situation, with Henry's help. Meanwhile, behind bars, Top Dog ditches her posse after a cigarette racket throws up a menthol ("a pudding fag"), causing the bereft gang to latch on to Helen. She's using her prison time to learn about the law, mostly from reading John Grisham novels, but with Jennifer Saunders's governess otherwise occupied, things don't look too hopeful.

Sharon Horgan returns to the always slightly dodgy world of the BBC Three sitcom with this new series about a woman wrongly sent to prison for murdering her boss.

In Dead Boss, innocent convict Helen Stephens is trying her best to overturn her conviction, which is not easy, as seemingly everyone around her is keen on her staying banged up. Her unhinged, arsonist cellmate Christine (Bryony Hannah) doesn't want her new friend to leave her; Governor Margaret (Jennifer Saunders) can't be bothered with the paperwork; the prison's reclusive "boss" Top Dog (Lizzie Roper) once was Stephens' bullied substitute teacher whose taunts leader her to murder her own husband; and former co-worker Henry (Edward Hogg) may seem keen on getting Stephens out, but he is a obsessive stalker who wants her to relay only on him.

The show began with a double-bill, which seemed like a good move, given that the second was clearly the stronger of the two. Both had their moments, but the first seemed to be concerned with setting up the situation more than the actual comedy - which is to be expected, really. The second episode, in which the prison runs a quiz where the top prize was five years off winner's sentence, had the better plot and, on the whole, was lots of fun.

I know some critics have been likened it, unfavourably, to Porridge, which was inevitable I suppose. However, both shows have major differences in terms of content, casting, and studio audiences (Porridge had one). It might even be better to think of Dead Boss as a comedy drama rather than a straight sitcom. Oh, and stop comparing the two.

Then again everyone else will probably be saying the same thing: "Why did they cancel Pulling?"

I realise BBC3 comedies are not aimed at the more considered grown-up, but nothing will stop me from saying: "Dead Boss? Dead loss, more like." This was a prison sitcom, with one normal person (Sharon Horgan as a woman wrongly convicted of murder) surrounded by pantomime fools. The stars of Porridge will be turning in their graves. Admittedly, Jennifer Saunders was good value as the governor and there was the odd decent line (a misunderstanding involving "cellmate" and "soulmate" made me laugh), but the overall effect was flatter than a long stretch in Norfolk. It had one of those ill-advised plinky "light" jazz scores (think Dirk Gently) designed to accentuate the absence of laughter. By the end of the second episode, I was rattling the bars myself.

Dead Boss creators 'begged' Jennifer Saunders for role

Dead Boss creators Sharon Horgan and Holly Walsh have admitted that they became "obsessed" with Jennifer Saunders after she agreed to appear in their new BBC Three comedy.

A strong cast doesn't conceal the fact that, on the evidence of the opening two episodes, this new comedy scripted by Holly Walsh and the usually reliable Sharon Horgan (above) needs to be funnier and darker. Horgan plays Helen, wrongly sent to prison for killing her boss. Nobody on the outside, including her hopeless lawyer (Geoff McGivern), seems able to help, while inside she has to contend with the malevolent governor (Jennifer Saunders). Future episodes promise star appearances by Caroline Quentin and Miranda Richardson.

Sharon Horgan co-writes (with Holly Walsh) and stars in a new comedy about a woman wrongly imprisoned for her boss's murder. It also stars Jennifer Saunders as the prison governor and Geoff McGivern as her shady solicitor. The first of two episodes tonight sees Helen (Horgan) sent down for 12 years after the boss of the tile warehouse she works at is found dead. In the second, she enters the prison quiz, in an attempt to shave five years off her sentence.

Holly Walsh interview

Holly Walsh talks about her new sitcom starring Jennifer Saunders, Sharon Horgan's amazing garden shed and how she turned a nasty accident to her advantage.

Returning to BBC3 four years after her critically-acclaimed sitcom Pulling was axed to make way for 17 more series' of Two Pints of Lager, Sharon Horgan recovers her form with Dead Boss, a satisfyingly silly prison-set sitcom co-written with comedian Holly Walsh.

Beginning with a double-bill, it stars Horgan as Helen, a woman wrongly sentenced to 12 years in the chokey for the murder of her boss. Her thwarted efforts to clear her name and survive within this madhouse form the spine of a likeable farce, which, as directed by The League of Gentlemen's Steve Bendelack, has a cartoonish quality vaguely redolent of that other (good) BBC3 sitcom, Ideal.

Merrily tweaking all the usual prison clichés, it's populated by the likes of a leering Top Dog - notorious for once paper-cutting an inmate to death with a copy of TV Quick - and Jennifer Saunders as a faux-mumsy Governess. In fact the cast is uniformly strong, with Geoffrey McGivern proving particularly amusing as Helen's hopeless lawyer.

It's no Porridge, but Dead Boss still succeeds as an enjoyable streak of assured nonsense.