Jessica Gunning
- Actor and writer
Press clippings
Jessica Gunning opens up about coming out later in life
Baby Reindeer and The Outlaws star Jessica Gunning has opened up on realising she was gay later in life. The actor recalled coming out in 2022 aged 36, describing how she came to understand more about her journey and how she told her loved ones.
Stefania Sarrubba, Digital Spy, 4th June 2024The Outlaws Series 3 review
Stephen Merchant is a lucky chap. Despite a tight budget, his crime caper The Outlaws has welcomed back its A-list superstar - not Christopher Walken, of The Deer Hunter, but Baby Reindeer's Jessica Gunning.
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail, 31st May 2024The Outlaws Series 3 review
Stephen Merchant serves up more delicious thrills and titters.
Jasper Rees, The Telegraph, 30th May 2024The Outlaws Series 3 review
It centres around a dead body, but the final series of Stephen Merchant's Bristol comedy is bursting with life.
Gerard Gilbert, i Newspaper, 29th May 2024Animated comedy Dave's Games to air on BBC Three
BBC Three is to broadcast Dave's Games, an animated comedy set around a video games shop in 1995, as part of its BBC Comedy Short Films strand. The voice cast includes Jessica Gunning, Jamie Demetriou and Emily Atack.
British Comedy Guide, 18th May 2024The Outlaws returning to BBC One for Series 3
The Outlaws is returning for a third series on BBC One, the corporation has confirmed. Creator Stephen Merchant says "we found there was so much meat still on the bone and still so much to do with the characters".
British Comedy Guide, 31st March 2023The Outlaws review
Slapstick gags, sex, violence... this Merchant caper is a mess.
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail, 6th June 2022It's not every day you get to see Christopher Walken ambling about a community project in Bristol. What next: Joe Pesci chugging in Birmingham's Bullring? New BBC One six-part dramedy The Outlaws, starring, co-written and directed by Bristolian Stephen Merchant (The Office; Extras; Hello Ladies), certainly hasn't stinted on casting: Dolly Wells, Clare Perkins, Eleanor Tomlinson, Darren Boyd, Gamba Cole, with Claes Bang and Richard E Grant to come. The premise is that seven small-fry lawbreakers are thrown together to renovate a building as community service in Bristol. So far, so aged-up, earthbound Misfits. Rani, "studious Asian good girl" turned shoplifter, played by Rhianne Barreto, observes: "Everyone's a type: rightwing blowhard, leftwing militant, celebutante, shifty old timer." There's also Merchant as a dweeb solicitor, and Jessica Gunning as an officious overseer, who is inevitably reminiscent of Gareth from The Office, with an added soupçon of civic authority.
I'd wondered if Walken's Hollywood star power would swamp things, but in the overstuffed opener his rogue barely gets a look-in. While some jokes worked, others didn't: one about "working harder than a prostitute with two mattresses" was Jeremy Clarkson-worthy (and no, making it come out of Walken's mouth doesn't make it any funnier). When another (unconnected) sex worker theme pops up in the second episode (both are available), it starts feeling borderline creepy.
Merchant has forged his own path since working with Ricky Gervais, but in The Outlaws opener, too many genres are crudely bolted together: comedy, crime, heartwarming drama, a bizarre segue into gangland Top Boy territory. The second episode, though, is a significant (funnier, tighter) improvement. I'll be sticking around, not least for Walken's Transylvanian mini-break of a face incongruously bobbing around the Bristol environs.
Barbara Ellen, The Observer, 31st October 2021The Outlaws review
Christopher Walken runs riot in brilliantly silly crime comedy.
Rebecca Nicholson, The Guardian, 25th October 2021The Outlaws review
Christopher Walken does community service in slightly naff misfit comedy.
Ed Cumming, The Independent, 25th October 2021