Joanna Scanlan

Sunetra Sarker on Puppy Love: I'm not great with dogs!

Casualty star Sunetra Sarker has a cameo in Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine's new comedy Puppy Love on BBC Four... that would be as well as making it to week 10 in this year's Strictly. So with all that good fun/ hard work in hand - how does she keep going?

Sunetra Sarker on Puppy Love: I'm not great with dogs!

Casualty star Sunetra Sarker has a cameo in Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine's new comedy Puppy Love on BBC Four... that would be as well as making it to week 10 partnering Brendan Cole in this year's Strictly. So with all that good fun/hard work in hand - how does she keep going?

TV review: Puppy Love, episode 3, BBC4

Right, I'm sticking with this like a dog with a bone. The third instalment of this dodgy doggy sitcom finds Nana V (Joanna Scanlan) more hard up than ever and Naomi Singh (Vicki Pepperdine) more snobby than ever.

Radio Times review

No howling laughs, but Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine's gentle comedy nuzzles up and wins you over like a doe-eyed mutt. As their teenage offspring get closer, do-gooder Naomi (Pepperdine) gets the upper hand with dog trainer Nana V (Scanlan), but a confidence-building day for pups soon puts paid to that.

Meanwhile, Naomi is beset by an unhinged neighbour, Heaven Jones (superb Margi Clarke), and V flannels her lardy ex's nether regions. Everyone is terribly obliging in this show.

The second instalment of the not-quite-happening sitcom starring Joanna Scanlan, hitherto best known for her performance as obdurately useless civil servant Terri Coverley in The Thick of It. Puppy Love recasts her as Nana V, a Wirral-based dog trainer, opposite Vicki Pepperdine - Scanlan's collaborator on NHS satire Getting On - as one of her customers. In this episode, Nana V works with police to create a Canine Responsibility Day. While the characters are well drawn, this doesn't atone for a lack of laughs.

One sitcom that we at The Custard TV have been passionate about over the past few years was BBC4 nursing comedy Getting On. So the fact that two of its writers and stars, Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan, have reunited for another BBC Four show was cause for excitement among several members of the website team.

Whilst Getting On was all about gentle comedy, similar in a way to BBC4's recent hit Detectorists, Pepperdine and Scanlan's new offering Puppy Love is a lot broader. The fact that one of the first episode's recurring jokes is a dog that likes to eat his own poo tells you just how broad the humour is. But that's not to say that Puppy Love doesn't have as much charm as Getting On, with Pepperdine and Scanlan still having the awkward chemistry that they shared in their previous hospital sitcom.

The main focus of the sitcom is Nana V (Scanlan); a notorious dog trainer who runs her own school and also aids the police in capturing strays. As a carer for her grandson, Nana V eventually comes into contact with the straight-laced Naomi (Pepperdine); a youth worker with an unruly pooch of her own. Naomi eventually signs up for Nana V's class but almost instantly clashes with the uncouth trainer particularly due to their shared affection for widower Alexander (Tobias Menzies). I felt that, as performers, Pepperdine and Scanlan played to their strengths with the former playing a stickler for the rules and the latter portraying a more free-and-easy character.

Their scenes together are definitely where Puppy Love is at its best and this is partly because a lot of the minor characters are underwritten.

Whilst it probably won't top the brilliance of the aforementioned Getting On, Puppy Love is still a promising comedy that provides a sufficient amount of laughs thanks mainly to the efforts of its two leading actresses.

From the geriatric ward to the life of the dog trainer - that's the leap attempted here by Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan, writers and stars of the fine Getting On. This sitcom introduces us to Scanlan's penurious dog trainer, Nana V, and Pepperdine's bureaucrat Mrs Singh, and watches their worlds collide. Tobias Menzies is the recently widowed owner of a misbehaving king charles cross, but with the main jokes deriving from his animal's fondness for eating faeces, this may struggle to match the team's high standards.

Radio Times review

This is a joy. Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine's follow-up to their BBC Four hospital comedy Getting On centres on a dog-training class in the Wirral. Scanlan plays power-tripping dog-handler Nana V with the company slogan "For all your dogging needs". She takes a shine to widower Alexander (Tobias Menzies) whose fluffy king poo is a "muck muncher". Her rival for his attentions is Naomi (Pepperdine), a harassed charity worker with an uncontrollable lab and a wayward teenage daughter.

A gentle comedy with superb character studies and several laugh-out-loud moments.

Puppy Love review

Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine's latest collaboration was ridiculous but sympathetic.

Joanna Scanlan's Puppy Love - a new comedy with bite

Dog walking proved to be a way out of depression for The Thick of It star and has inspired her new comedy series.