Jessica Hynes

New sitcom from Jessica Hynes (Spaced). It's 1910 and the quietly intellectual Margaret (Hynes) is keen to convert fellow members of the Banbury Intricate Craft Circle to the ways of women's suffrage. They include the group's formidable leader Helen (Rebecca Front), her outrageous mother Emily, perpetually pregnant Eva and the unfortunately toothed Gwen. The cast utilise every iota of their impressive comic timing, but despite the combination of Hynes, Front and feminism, the jokes are far too gentle.

Jessica Hynes leads from the front as Margaret in this jolly suffragette sitcom. A woman whose scientific mind and political aspirations are racing ahead of her fellow stitchers in the Banbury Intricate Craft Circle, Margaret is eager to embrace the modern world of 1910. A recent convert to the suffragette cause, can Margaret convince her circle to square up and join the fight for women's votes? Rebecca Front, Vicki Pepperdine and Ryan Sampson lend varying degrees of support.

Jessica Hynes moves as far as she can from her buzzword-spewing PR wonk in Twenty Twelve with a self-penned sitcom set in a church hall in Banbury in 1910. Hynes is Margaret, a mouse about to roar: she wants the other women in the local craft circle to put down their tapestries and agitate for women's suffrage.

It's a static, traditional affair. In episode one at least, we never leave the hall and its adjoining kitchen, and despite an army of additional gag-writers on the credits, you're more likely to smile creakily than laugh. But, gently, the foundations of something good are in place.

Rebecca Front and Vicki Pepperdine are terrific as a frosty antagonist and buck-toothed naïf respectively, Hynes is great as ever, and the central point - that the silly sexism of the time is still with us - lends it some edge.

Jessica Hynes: it's OK to poke fun at suffragettes

As her new sitcom Up the Women launches on BBC Four, Jessica Hynes explains why feminism can now be funny.

Jessica Hynes's first full-series sitcom since Spaced could hardly be more different: old-fashioned, a little stagey and reminiscent of Dad's Army with its band of carefully characterised misfits playing a bit part in serious events of global significance.

Hynes is Margaret, leading a superb cast including Rebecca Front (whose embittered luddite conservative is a highlight), Vicki Pepperdine and Judy Parfitt as the ladies of the Banbury Intricate Craft Circle. The hot debate of the day (that day being in 1910) rapidly moves from tiffin provisions to whether or not to take up the suffragette cause after Margaret returns from London bursting with politely revolutionary zeal.

The performances are game (especially from Pepperdine, shelving any vanity rather magnificently), but the satire nibbles rather than bites; it's resolutely warm, gentle stuff, lacking a little polish and a big comic set-piece. Even so, it's a concept rich with potential and Hynes has more than earned our indulgence with her performance in Twenty Twelve.

Jessica Hynes moving from Twenty Twelve to Up The Women

With the Olympics long gone, Jessica Hynes is hoping her new suffragette sitcom will pull in the votes.

Jessica Hynes interview

I caught up with Jessica Hynes at a private screening of some Georgian photos in London that she'd helped to organise, to chat all things Up The Women. Here's what the lady herself had to say...

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The brilliant innuendo in the title alone is enough to sell BBC Four's new suffragette comedy, but for those of you who need more convincing (you awkward blighters) we've got plenty of reasons why you should give Up The Women a spin.

Firstly, it's written by cult favourite turned award winner (thank you Spaced and Twenty Twelve) Jessica Hynes, who also stars in the show alongside Rebecca Front - aka the woman that's appeared in practically every classic British comedy of the last two decades. And on top of that, the premise of timid Banbury woman Margaret (Hynes) attempting to convince her arts and crafts group to join the suffrage movement sounds like absolute gold. We're gonna be talking in cut-glass accents for weeks afterwards...

Jessica Hynes chooses an unlikely subject for comedy

Og all the subjects funny enough to base a sitcom around, women's suffrage probably isn't top of most comedy writers' lists. But that failed to deter Twenty Twelve star Jessica Hynes from wringing jokes from the Edwardian women's struggle for the vote - she's written a very funny three-part sitcom about it for BBC Four, Up The Women.