Joanna Page

This week there's a fight in the playground. Miss Hunter wearily frog-marches the offenders back to her classroom for a lecture while their children look on wide-eyed. Meanwhile, another mum - the over-enthusiastic Aussie - has organised an afterschool "salsa-cise" as part of the head's unpopular fitness drive. Alas, salsa-cise soon turns into a boxing match...

This school gates-set sitcom boasts a top-notch cast, including Sue Johnston as the jaded Miss Hunter, Joanna Page as a harassed mum and the dashing Tom Ellis as a dad who can't understand why an unhappy housewife keeps batting her eyelashes his way.

Joanna Page interview

Joanna Page might be best known as one half of the loveable Gavin and Stacey, but Matthew Hemley finds that the actor, currently starring in Sky1's new comedy series Gates, has a fierce passion for her profession and is not afraid to speak her mind.

We arrive at the Gates, Sky Living's new sitcom about the parents and staff of a congenial city primary, and the 15-minute social minefield they're forced to navigate at the beginning and end of each school day. Gates had the potential to be a new Outnumbered, with its harried middle-class parents, and its ensemble's impeccable comedy pedigree: Sue Johnston (The Royle Family); Joanna Page (Gavin & Stacey); Tony Gardner (Lead Balloon; Fresh Meat).

In the first episode, builder and new parent Mark (Tom Ellis, him off Miranda) was cornered on the school run by two terrifying mums: a militantly mustard-keen Aussie who organises coffee mornings and salsa-cise evenings, and an uncomfortably tactile art therapist. The teacher (Johnston) is perpetually hung- over. The headmaster is barely out of short trousers himself, and eager to please Ofsted with his "School and Home Partnership Workshop Week" (aka Parents' Week). The only sane people in the school are the pupils.

I laughed out loud once - at the headmaster's bowing and scraping before a bemused Ofsted inspector - and smiled once or twice more. Gates hasn't quite decided whether it's a realist cringe comedy, or a semi-surrealist one. A lot of sitcom pilots disappoint, but they can improve with age. The second series of both the BBC's Episodes and Grandma's House, for example, have been received far more warmly than their first. Gates is still only half an idea, middlingly executed, but given time it might settle into something more watchable. Outnumbered, though, it ain't.

Yet another school-based sitcom, but this time the parents (Joanna Page and Tom Ellis) are the butt of the jokes. On the first day of school they're much more nervous than their daughter, knowing they must run the gauntlet of the school gates where predators prowl eager to ensnare them in endless coffee mornings, after-school activities and play-dates.

Before you can say "How do you do?" the new dad is fleeing from a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Aussie and a lonely housewife. Best of all is Sue Johnston as a hungover teacher who couldn't care less about the headmaster's harebrained schemes. Survivors of the school run will soon be chuckling in sympathy.

A good first day of term for this new school-set sitcom, the second to launch tonight alongside BBC3's Bad Education. Gates is a more family-friendly affair, following Joanna Page and Tom Ellis as they - and their far more mature daughter - negotiate the primary-school run in a new town where minding their own business proves impossible. Well cast and showcasing a gentler sort of observational humour, Gates proves that Sky 'gets' sitcoms even if they haven't yet mastered the comedy-drama.

Given school's out for summer, this is an odd time to schedule a sitcom set around the playground politics of the school gates. Still, parents will recognise the foibles of the accidental relationships formed by circumstance and childhood alliances. Joanna Page and Miranda hunk Tom Ellis star as parents whose daughter is starting a new school.

Gavin & Stacey's Joanna Page, Sue Johnston and Tom Ellis (better known as Miranda's love interest) star in a new comedy about the parents who meet daily to pick their kids up from school. Helen (Page) and Mark (Ellis) enrol their daughter in her new primary school, where they encounter the minefield of parental etiquette, volunteering for the PTA and school-gate flirtations. Support from Catherine Shepherd, Ella Kenion and Tony Gardner. Promises good things.

A promising start for a new comedy set around the daily drop-off and pick-up point at a primary school - a minefield of social politics. Mark (Tom Ellis) and Helen (Gavin & Stacey star Joanna Page) and their daughter Chloe (Mari Ann Bull) are new to the area and Helen warns Mark not to get involved with the other parents; "these gates are a jungle," she warns. But an unexperienced Mark proves defenceless as he is lured into hosting a post-school party and giving a presentation to the pupils. Sue Johnston shines as a swinging, single older teacher.

Joanna Page interview

Joanna Page stars with Tom Ellis as parents Helen and Mark. The pair desperately try to avoid getting mixed up with the other parents, and their after school activities, when they move to a new area, and their daughter starts a new school.

Joanna Page: 'I don't think I'd be a glam mum!'

Gavin & Stacey actress Joanna Page returns to our screens next week in Gates, a new Sky Living comedy about a group of parents running the gauntlet of the daily school run.