Lesley Sharp

Living the Dream: comedy drama at its most lightweight

Living the Dream, Sky1's new six-part series, is billed as a "comedy-drama". No genre makes the heart sink quite so fast. All good comedy is weighted with pathos, just as dramas can be all the bleaker for the odd belly laugh. In British programming, "comedy drama" is a byword for "light viewing," usually a warning that what follows will be neither one thing nor the other.

More gentle ups and downs in Matlock. Terry (Brendan Coyle) is getting high blood pressure from his building project, while his wife Jan (Lesley Sharp) is further enchanted by her creative writing class, and its sensitive but hunky teacher (Vincent Regan). Meanwhile, Bell (Rebecca Night) clashes, in some nicely timed scenes, with her fussy mother-in-law-to-be (Jaye Griffiths).

As usual, creators Steve Edge and Matt King give themselves the most fun, as Fergie and Loz set up an organic glamping business, but are thwarted by Loz's morbid fear of ventriloquists' dummies.

Matt King (Super Hans) and Steve Edge write another series of their gentle, Derbyshire-set family drama starring Lesley Sharp and Brendan Coyle. Mr and Mrs Starling navigate the gently lapping waters of marriage while he continues with his building work and she takes a creative writing course taught by a total hornbag (Vincent Regan) who is definitely going to start pestering her for sex. Meanwhile, Charlie hurts her foot, Gravy digs up some treasure and Reuben has an important question for Bell. Dead cute.

Last year, Starlings got that difficult formula for cosy comedy drama exactly right: visits to the Starlings brood in Matlock were warm, funny and welcoming without quite descending into vomitous tweeness. So it continues with the series-two opener, where a mishap for young Charlie (Finn Atkins) and a new suitor for matriarch Jan (the gently authoritative Lesley Sharp) bring threats we know very well the family will eventually overcome. This year, Cherie Lunghi joins the superb cast.

A drama named after the noisiest, most in-your-face of garden birds was never going to be a shy and introspective affair. And so it proved: you have to shout to make yourself heard in the Starling household, the nest feathered by redoubtable matriarch Jan (the ever watchable Lesley Sharp). Season two picks up where the first left off, the mix of soapy melodrama and knockabout comedy focusing on tomboy daughter Charlie (Finn Atkins), who's been in the wars.

An "everyone goes on holiday" episode, which, like a lot of holidays, is meant to freshen people up but mostly makes their flaws more stark. Terry and Jan (Brendan Coyle and Lesley Sharp) have a break at home alone for their anniversary - an excuse for soppy nostalgia if they didn't already go in for that every week.

Reuben and Bell are at a spa to try to overcome their weirdly trivial relationship problem, despite Bel's annoying intransigence. Everyone else goes "wild camping" with Fergie, disastrously. That's by far the most entertaining strand but, as ever, even the cheesy bits are lifted by the superb cast. As Reuben, Ukweli Roach is particularly skilled at drawing laughs and pathos from a limited role.

Starlings is a slow-moving but sweet-natured comedy-drama series about four generations living beneath the same modestly sized roof in Matlock, Derbyshire. Lesley Sharp and Brendan Coyle are the show's solidly dependable stars.

The series commences with the home birth of baby Zac, who not only gets the series off to a suitably dramatic start but provides the writers with a nifty plot device whereby granddad introduces him - and us - to the rest of the family in turn.

The characters are engaging, the relationships between them interesting and the script consistently amusing. Mercifully, eccentricity is kept to a minimum and the plot lines have a reasonably firm hold on the recognisably real.
Apart from Zac's arrival not a lot happens, and what does happen takes its time about it. However, an hour in the company of the Starlings passes pleasantly enough, and there are enough hints at darker plot developments ahead to keep my interest for the foreseeable future.

When it comes to warm, affirmative, slightly twee dramas, Sky1 has got our backs. But if you're after something a little more adventurous, it's the last place you'd look. Written by Steve Edge and Matt 'Super Hans' King, Starlings is a living, breathing family homily. On the basis of this opening episode, we suspect it will trade in muted domestic dramas with broadly uplifting conclusions - a new baby prompts some upheaval; Dad has health problems and a little debt; a son struggles for direction in life. If you enjoyed The Café - a similarly minor Sky1 pleasure - this may be up your street. And the cast, which includes Lesley Sharp, Brendan Coyle and King himself, are solid, likeable troupers. But there's a thin line between sweet and sickly, and Starlings wanders dangerously close to it.