Miranda Hart

Miranda Hart: Eddie Braben brought us all sunshine

Miranda Hart recalls meeting her hero Eddie Braben - the genius scriptwriter behind Morecambe and Wise - who died last week.

Cultural life: Miranda Hart, comedian

Miranda Hart talks about her current cultural tastes.

Comedy? It isn't funny anymore

With the likes of Miranda Hart - she who is as funny as genocide (subjectively speaking) - one can almost forgive the new generation their flat gags, given that successful TV joke tellers, and therefore role models, are operating on a Joe Pasquale level.

David Frost interview

"I'm so sad," David Frost sighs, "that we couldn't include Miranda Hart, as I think she is superb, but she doesn't do sketches... I'll have to make up a programme to showcase her talents."

The Job Lot got off to a very strong start.

Sarah Hadland stars as Trish, the manager of a West Midlands job centre, recently returned from stress-related sickness leave. Ostensibly sunny and positive - "turn the unemployed into the fun employed" is her motto - Trish struggles to maintain the facade in a work environment beset by resentment, hostility, despair, defeatism and bureaucracy. And that's before they open up to the public.

The show is essentially an ensemble piece - a uniformly excellent cast includes Russell Tovey, Jo Enright and Emma Rigby - but it is Hadland's understated, poignant portrayal of brittle optimism under unbearable stress that holds it all together. It is good to see Hadland, best known as Miranda Hart's sidekick Stevie in the former's eponymous sitcom, emerging from Hart's shadow as a fine comic actor in her own right.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: to lose one scene-stealing support player is unfortunate but to lose two could be considered careless. So can the sitcom that helped launch the career of Miranda Hart - and survived - pull off the same trick now Tim Vine is absent from the sixth series? All eyes are on Lee Mack, still firmly at the centre of this universe, with puns and misfortune whirling around him like dysfunctional satellites as Lucy (Sally Bretton) plays Watership Down with a brace of innocent rabbits and Daisy (Katy Wix) strides in to make matters worse.

Opinion: Is comedy getting too posh?

There is already a sign that comedy is getting posher. Miranda Hart and Jack Whitehall spring to mind, but there are others on the horizon too.

Miranda Hart on her comedy hero Eric Morecambe

Plus Barry Cryer, Ant and Dec, Victoria Wood, Ben Miller salute a legacy of laughter.

Miranda Hart has often cited Eric Morecambe as the biggest influence on her comedy style - something that could be deduced from watching any episode of her sitcom Miranda. Hart has even been dubbed by Morecambe's widow Joan, as her husband's comedy "heir in female form". Who better, then, to present the first in series in which celebrities celebrate the lives and careers of their heroes. Hart's journey takes her to the town from which John Eric Bartholomew took his stage name, and on to Wales, Essex, Brighton, Luton and London, as she discovers how he met his partner Ernie Wise and recalls how the pair won millions of fans with The Morecambe & Wise Show.

My Hero: Miranda Hart on Eric Morecambe - TV review

Miranda shows plenty of Hart in her homage to Eric Morecambe, but do we really need to see her supporting his football team?