Joanna Scanlan

The women are the best thing on No Offence

Joanna Scanlan, Elaine Cassidy and Alexandra Roach were on top form in the gritty, funny cop show...

Paul Abbott's new Manchester-set police drama starts with a bang as you would expect. Dina (Elaine Cassidy) is a determined, unafraid powerhouse of policing; Joy (Alexandra Roach) is her nervy colleague; and Joanna Scanlan is Viv, their boss. It's the women who lead this, and brilliant support comes fromPaul Ritter and Will Mellor. We didn't really need another police drama but, if there has to be one, Abbott is the man for the job. It thrusts and bulges with his energy and heart while avoiding procedural cliche. A brilliant start.

Radio Times review

There's a breathless and brutal opening to this coarse, crude, rude, often very funny Paul Abbott comedy drama as a young detective, Dinah Kowalska, chases a suspect through the streets of Manchester.

Kowalska (Elaine Cassidy) is a highly capable woman who's in with a shot at making detective sergeant. But her terrifying boss Detective Inspector Vivienne Deering (the magnificent Joanna Scanlan, from The Thick of It and Getting On) wants a little word with her first.

Abbott is a past master at creating brilliantly well-rounded, realistic women characters (Shameless, State of Play) and Deering, who is eye-wateringly forthright (truly, No Offence is not for the faint-hearted) is particularly vivid. And, in the noble tradition of TV cops, she has no truck with authority - her jobsworth boss is the very suave Colin Salmon - as she hunts a serial killer targeting women with Down's syndrome.

No Offence: meet the stars

The women are calling the shots in Paul Abbott's new Manchester-set procedural. We get leads Joanna Scanlan, Alexandra Roach and Elaine Cassidy together to talk blood, sweat, tears (and Bez).

No Offence review: Joanna Scanlan shines

The tone for No Offence is perfectly exemplified by its opening scene in which one of the aforementioned strong female characters, DS Dinah Kowalska, is enjoying a night off from work.

Joanna Scanlan on No Offence

Comedy queen Joanna Scanlan plays sexy D.I. Vivienne Deering in Paul Abbott's darkly funny No Offence.

No Offence heading to Australia & Denmark

Channel 4 has lined up deals for the eight episode series starring Joanna Scanlan and Elaine Cassidy with Australian public broadcaster ABC TV and Danish broadcaster DR.

BBC Four's 'Puppy Love' cancelled after one season

BBC Four has cancelled Puppy Love, the latest comedy series from Getting On co-creators Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine, after airing one six episode season, TVWise can reveal.

Five episodes in, Puppy Love remains perfectly pleasant viewing, but still feels frustratingly less than the sum of its parts. It has all the requisite ingredients of a successful modern sitcom - cheerfully complicated families, gently simmering class conflict, and fine lead turns by Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine - but it still feels too amiable for its own good. Tonight, Pepperdine's neurotic middle-class matriarch Naomi meets the long-absent brother of Scanlan's caravan-dwelling dog-trainer, with surprising consequences.

Radio Times review

As this series scampers along, it feels less like a comedy and more like a family drama with the odd moment raising a chuckle. Which isn't to say it's not a pleasurable half-hour in the company of Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine as Nana V and Naomi Singh, now reeling at the news they're about to become gran and great-gran to Eron and Jasmine's baby.

Tonight's guest spot goes to Phil Cornwell as V's grotty, errant brother, Fatdraic. He offers Naomi unexpected succour when her marriage breaks down and spikes the Rice Krispie cakes that the youngsters are smuggling into prison. Naomi and V must take swift action.