Joanna Scanlan

Sue Perkins's almost-out gay vet Sara visits chucklesome life coach Toria (The Thick Of It's Joanna Scanlan) in a bid to ease her transition towards revealing all to her parents. She's also busy acting as pet-based marriage counsellor to trophy wife type Julia (Amy Huberman), who is seeking custody of her hound Rufus. Meanwhile, for some vaguely explained reason, she finds herself playing paintball and meeting a Dutch movie star. In summary, the surreal moments are jarring, the narrative is a mess, and then it just ends.

Sue Perkins's gentle comic persona keeps this new sitcom about a slightly useless vet ticking over. Sara (Perkins) is a lesbian who has yet to come out to her parents, but is being chatted up by one of her clients. Tonight she tries to help a woman retain her dog during a messy divorce, and there's an amusing scene when she visits Toria, her life coach - played by the endlessly funny Joanna Scanlan from The Thick of It and Getting On.

New to BBC Two, Sue Perkins stars in a new sitcom about a lesbian vet - although she herself has described it as not being a "gay sitcom".

Perkins plays Sara, who in the opening episode celebrates her 40th birthday. However, she has one major problem coming up: she's never told her parents that she's gay, making up bizarre-sounding boyfriends like a Frenchman who sells false legs. To make things worse, they're coming up to see her in a few weeks. As a result, for her birthday her parents decide to hire Sara a rather unorthodox (and to Sara an annoying) lifestyle coach called Toria (Joanna Scanlan), to give her the courage to finally come out. If Sara fails to do so, Toria's under instructions to tell Sara's parents herself.

This opening episode was very good. The first scene, in which Sara deals with a cat called Mosley owned by someone who seems to be keen on alternative therapies (Ella Kenion), is great. It gets better when she starts to put the cat down, only for the owner to change her mind half-way through. This leads to an even better scene starring Mark Heap as the undertaker at a pet crematorium, in a typically bonkers role that we are used to seeing him in. The laughs keep coming.

Much of the better comic moments are slightly skewed. It's not off-the-wall surrealism, it's just slightly odd, but in this case odd works well. Whether it's a scene involving a netball team doing a haka or the idea of a restaurant which tells you the name of the cow you are eating, it all seems to be working well.

And Sue's right - the fact the lead character's gay appears to be something just in the background. This series has potential, but the big test is still to come.

Radio Times review

The central character of Heading Out was Sara, a 40-year-old vet, afraid of commitment and very afraid of telling her parents she is gay. Except it wasn't Sara up there, it was Sue Perkins. The wry rhythms, the crafted wit tempered by stuttering diffidence, the coy friendliness twinkling through that protective fringe: Sue Perkins.

So you might say, well, that doesn't work. We don't believe it's Sara. Unlike Grandma's House or Seinfeld or Ellen, the star isn't playing someone with their own name. Perkins isn't meant to be herself, but she inescapably is because we know her too well, in a way most actors cannily never allow.

The solution, in theory: cast someone else. But this wasn't an option, partly because Sara was totally Perkins in script as well as performance, but also because such a thin alter ego let our affection transfer easily. You like Sue Perkins? (Yes.) Then you'll like her playing a woman who looks and sounds the same.

Lose her presence and you'd lose the show's considerable charm, since the supporting cast were mostly struggling as caricatured oddballs: Dominic Coleman as a neat freak, Joanna Scanlan as a bellowy, hockey-sticks life coach hired by Sara's friends to help her come out fully, Mark Heap very Mark Heapy in a bit part as an officious pet-crematorium manager.

Nothing felt real, particularly the digression when Sara played netball and the opposition performed a fearsome dance routine before the game. "It seems to be some sort of inner-city, asthmatic Haka," said Sara, exactly as Perkins would in a documentary or panel show.

The Sara/Sue thing can't sustain Heading Out for long. Sara needs to stand on her own, even if it's through Perkins revealing parts of her own character that the fans haven't seen before, and the dialogue needs to sound a lot less like the carefully written words of a presenter. So it was pleasing to see a glint of this in episode one, when Sara met a potential love interest (Shelley Conn) in the park and ineptly chatted her up.

Viewers nervous about this being a "lesbian sitcom" were probably waiting for one of them to announce that they were gay, but nobody needed to because the writing and acting were nuanced and true. Sara and Sue were both out of their comfort zone - and rising to the challenge.

Sue Perkins debuted her brand new comedy Heading Out, looking at the travails of lesbian vet Sara, dealing with the onset of her 40th birthday, a new girl on the sofa, a dead cat... and the small matter of not being out to her parents.

The humour was swift-moving enough, with Sara inventing an absent salesman boyfriend for the benefit of the furrowed-brow parents. Not just any old absent salesman, but a French one, who sold prosthetic legs... of course.

As the writer on this too, Perkins packed it all in... ruminations with her cleanliness-obsessed best friend, her dealings with the feline crematorium manager, a disastrous netball match, a sweet meet-cute in the park with an errant dog owner, an equally disastrous surprise party - attended by not one but two potential girlfriends, as well as the aforementioned dead cat.

I had fears that the ever-likeable Perkins, like Simon Amstell in his Grandma's House, would be too familiar a face for us to lose ourselves sufficiently in this suburban caper. But her warm persona transferred robustly to the drama, which was set up perfectly for next week's therapy session with netball soldier turned life coach Toria (The Thick of It's Joanna Scanlan). In a word: Very promising (okay, two then).

Sue Perkins has been conspicuously absent from recent British cake bakes.

Now we know why - she's been busy writing and starring in this vet-based sitcom about the anxieties of 39-year-old gay vet Sara trying and failing to come out to her parents.

After a dodgy start - cat lovers beware - things perk up when Perkins's priceless comedy pals, including Dominic Coleman, Joanna Scanlan and Mark Heap, provide light relief from Sara's perplexing love life.

The recent death of Richard Briers drew attention to how wretched much of the BBC's mainstream sitcom output has become. Heading Out isn't going to reverse this downward slide, but if this opener to Sue Perkins's series is a little light on laughs, it's still sharply observed and amiably performed. Perkins, in particular, is unrecognisable from her hyper-irritating turns on Supersizers.

She plays Sara, a vet grappling with the prospect of coming out to her parents as she turns 40: animals, sexuality, family, age... Classic sitcom themes all, but the vaguely autobiographical nature of Heading Out gives it a little extra frisson. The physical comedy of the set-piece netball match is awkwardly staged and among a generally strong supporting cast, Joanna Scanlan's Miriam Margolyes impression seems to come from a different show entirely. Otherwise, a promising start.

Sue Perkins has become one of the faces of BBC Two in recent years, presenting all maner of food and pop-historical programming. Now she returns to her comic roots in this self-written sitcom, starring as Sara, a successful female vet about to turn 40 - but still frightened to tell her parents (Jeff Rawle and Harriet Walter) that she's gay. Her motley gang of friends set an ultimatum: if Sara fails to reveal her sexuality within six weeks, they will. To make matters even more chaotic, they arrange for her to attend a series of sessions with an eccentric life coach.

In her acting debut, Perkins is likeably beleaguered and sardonic, while there's a strong supporting cast of Nicola Walker (Spooks, Last Tango in Halifax), Dominic Coleman (Miranda), Shelley Conn (Mistresses) and Joanna Scanlan (The Thick of It, Getting On) - not to mention lots of four-legged extras. Guest stars also pop up throughout the six-part run, including June Brown, Steve Pemberton, Mark Heap, Dawn French and Perkins's Great British Bake Off co-host and original comedy partner Mel Giedroyc[/o]. Pitched somewhere between the slapstick Miranda and the sardonic Grandma's House, it's a highly promising, enjoyably daft opener.

Sue Perkins has become ubiquitous at the BBC in the last few years, whether eating peculiar period food or learning to conduct orchestras or telling us about Mrs Dickens/Maria Von Trapp or, as co-host of The Great British Bake-Off, making bad puns about buns. Someone, somewhere, has decided we can't get enough of her. You may have your own feelings about this. Well, here she is again, allegedly going back to her comedy roots with her own sitcom, where she plays Sara, a neurotic vet who's about to turn 40 but hasn't yet managed to tell her parents that she's gay.

Despite being kind of annoying, she has supportive friends (including ever-reliable performers Nicola Walker and Joanna Scanlan) and is able to attract hot ladies like Shelley Conn, who is charmed by Sara's rotten patter and way with extracting barbed wire from dogs' paws.

Around 50 per cent of the show is laboured animal slapstick - there is a dead cat which is lugged around to decreasing effect - and the other half is meant to be touching, as Sara wrestles with her inadequacies and her friends urge her to finally come out to her folks. It's an awkward mix. The comedy just isn't that funny and the sentiment isn't that interesting. At times I felt a bit of second-hand embarrassment and - worst of all - the show reminded me of two grim indulgent sitcoms of years past: Baddiel's Syndrome, in which David Baddiel and his mates failed miserably at doing a Seinfeld, and Rhona, in which Rhona Cameron and her mates (including Perkins' double act and Bake-Off partner Mel Giedroyc) failed at doing an Ellen. What they all have in common is that their stars aren't actually actors but stand-ups, and that the other two only lasted one series. There's a lesson there.

Interview: Joanna Scanlan

Actress tells Veronica Lee about the NHS and dark comedy - and why she's glad there are lighter times ahead.