Lorraine Ashbourne
- Actor
Press clippings
Alma's Not Normal to end as Sophie Willan writes Pendle witch satire
Alma's Not Normal will end with its upcoming second series, creator and star Sophie Willan has revealed, though she is currently working on a Christmas special to bookend her loosely autobiographical BBC comedy and is writing a satire about the Pendle witches with Maxine Peake.
British Comedy Guide, 3rd September 2024Alma's Not Normal, review
Sophie Willan turns trauma into comedy gold.
Michael Hogan, The Telegraph, 13th September 2021Alma's Not Normal, BBC2, review
Sophie Willan's comedy is a joyful portrait of the North we rarely see on TV.
Emily Baker, i Newspaper, 13th September 2021Alma's Not Normal series filming in Bolton
Filming is underway on Alma's Not Normal, Sophie Willan's BBC Two sitcom about a Boltonian woman and her family of eccentric, unruly women.
British Comedy Guide, 10th May 2021Alma's Not Normal review
For a pilot episode, Alma's Not Normal easily achieves what it's meant to do and introduces a cast of intriguing, sympathetic characters we'd like to hear more from. Most crucially, they are complex, authentic people portrayed in a way we don't usually see on television.
Steve Bennett, Chortle, 7th April 2020TV preview: Alma's Not Normal, BBC Two
Comedian Sophie Willan has been one of stand-up's most distinctive voices in recent years. Honest, outspoken and frank about her life, she has now has drawn on her history to write this one-off pilot. If the BBC does not commission a series it must need its head examined.
Bruce Dessau, Beyond The Joke, 5th April 2020Cast revealed for Sara Pascoe sitcom Out Of Her Mind
Juliet Stevenson, Cariad Lloyd, Adrian Edmondson, Navin Chowdhry and Sheila Reid are amongst the cast joining Sara Pascoe in her new BBC Two sitcom Out Of Her Mind.
British Comedy Guide, 5th March 2020Alma's Not Normal begins filming
Sophie Willan's upcoming New On Two sitcom pilot, Alma's Not Normal, has begun filming on location in Bolton.
British Comedy Guide, 13th February 2020To a suburban semi, where Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith have gone a bit Mike Leigh. It's Nana's birthday party, thrown by Angela (Claire Skinner), the more successful of her two daughters. Into a house kept pristine by Angela's crippling OCD blows bitter dipsomaniac Carol (Lorraine Ashbourne). Pemberton and Shearsmith are the golf-sweatered husbands waging a cold war via practical jokes. As one prank blows up a mass of secrets, the script slides effortlessly from funny to dark to desperately sad.
Jack Seale, The Guardian, 23rd April 2015Radio Times review
The praise lavished upon this anthology series from viewers and TV critics alike is justly deserved, and this episode is another cracker. In Nana's Party, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith (writing and directing) play prankster brothers-in-law who, with their wives (Claire Skinner as an OCD mum and Lorraine Ashbourne as her alcoholic sister), gather for Maggie's 79th birthday. Cue another delightfully ditsy turn from Benidorm's Elsie Kelly.
The half-hour unfolds like a micro-packaged Mike Leigh drama, with finely judged performances as secrets and lies are exposed in cosy suburbia. All it's lacking is Timothy Spall grunting.
Patrick Mulkern, Radio Times, 23rd April 2015