Miranda Hart

We're not having a laugh

Tragic news from the English comedy store: it's mostly empty. The best comedy presently on mainstream TV is Nurse Jackie from the US; the only bright spot of native televisual wit is Rab C Nesbitt, which is Scottish and 20 years old. Last year's Miranda on BBC2, written by and starring Miranda Hart, brought a very fine comic talent to wider notice but the new year in comedy has so far been as limp as England's batting in the final cricket Test against South Africa.

Remember the dodgy MP who claimed thousands for a gold sarcophagus and a terracotta army? Or the Duckmanitarian crisis, which saw ducks around the country losing their homes?

Miranda Hart sums up 2009 with spoofs made up in someone's head. The show uses real footage, heavily messed with, and specially-recorded material that looks at events that almost happened but didn't - such as an 80-year-old Arlene Phillips being replaced on Strictly by a child.

Talking heads include Stephen K Amos, Sally Phillips and Duncan Bannatyne.

The year's defining moments in culture, politics and television are cut up into a thousand pieces, then reassembled for our amusement, in a spoof of the traditional list show. Miranda Hart guides us through re-imagined versions of party leaders' conference speeches, George Bush issues a semi-musical apology for his time in office, and even Jeremy Paxman gets a light ribbing. Guests include Stephen K Amos, Duncan Bannatyne, and Adam Buxton with a uniquely suburban take on Ed Wardle's Alone in the Wild documentary adventure.

Miranda ended as it began, a critical nightmare. Devote any rational thought to it and it was rubbish. Yet watch it with your brain on dimmer switch and it had a curious way of making you laugh despite yourself. Retro but not in an ironic way, the yin of its rubbish gags was offset by the yang of Miranda Hart's eye-rolling mugging to camera. Last night's closing episode also scored major points for featuring Titan, the cutest chihuahua this side of Christmas. Watching big Hart clutch tiny Titan while small sidekick Stevie stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a great dane made me wonder if the cat had been slipping Vicodin into my egg soldiers.

Miranda says good bye

"It has been a pleasure and thank you so much for watching and being interested. It means a hell of a lot."

The main source of the comedy in Miranda is that she is a human stegosaurus, huge and hugely unfanciable, which as others have noted is politically not very correct. And if political incorrectness isn't reason enough on its own to love Miranda, there are plenty of other reasons, not least, in our house anyway, that it is the first new primetime sitcom I can recall that unites the whole family, all laughing our socks off. The hugely engaging Miranda Hart also deserves a medal, or better still a Bafta, for reminding us that slapstick can be funny. Not an episode goes by without her tripping over something, or getting stuck in something, which in less assured hands would be justification for throwing a heavy object at the telly, but it takes real deftness to appear as galumphing as that. She might even be the reincarnation of Tommy Cooper. At any rate, she deserves to have her name in the title.

I'm finding it - unusually for me - hard to find even one fault with this BBC2 comedy. It's funny; it's very funny, and I really wasn't expecting it to be, primarily because before I watched it myself, I'd heard the word 'slapstick' in relation to it, and I'm always wary of that.

That was a word used when describing Big Top and that 'show' should be lined up and shot. Thankfully, Miranda doesn't need putting out of its misery, but I think it does need moving to a more prestigious timeslot on BBC1.

And the main character, Miranda, played by Miranda Hart, is wonderfully engaging. She's not only comedically self-deprecating, she's witty too with rapid fire and genuinely funny character interplay.

Her supporting cast are great too; Patricia Hodge has lost none of her chameleon like acting abilities in the time she's been absent from our screens and the relative newbies in the show are, I'm sure, destined for good things if their performances in Miranda are anything to go by.

One of the most charming things for me about this show is that Miranda Hart has perhaps laid bare some of the things that have most probably been burdens for her to bear in her real life, and opened them up to comedic interpretation.

The jokes and running issues about her size, looks, accent and so on are of course funny, but I can't help but wonder if at times, the real Miranda has found them hugely hurtful? But if she has, she's managed to parlay those barbs into he-who-laughs-last as the cheques roll in for this show. And others that may follow - I hope.

And another pleasing fact about the show is that there's something in it to which most of us can relate. The snipes from mother, the odd friends, the unsuitable job... there really is something to appeal to pretty much everyone in Miranda, and I hope when this series ends, there's another already in the pipeline.

Miranda Hart Writersroom Interview

Miranda Hart is interviewed by the BBC Writers Room.

Miranda is such fun

"Hi team. Pleasure to be virtually with you again. So here we are, penultimate episode."

Well-meaning Miranda faces yet more social horrors when her friend sets her up on a blind date and her mum organises a themed party. Even worse, it's Valentine's Day. "I don't know who St Valentine was, but I hope he died alone surrounded by couples," shrieks Miranda before she falls over the furniture, yet again. There's too much falling over in Miranda. Yes, I get it, Miranda Hart is very tall and she's an accomplished physical comedian, but enough. She's much funnier when she's hopeless without being pathetic, like when she goes on an excruciating blind date arranged by her mobile-phone-obsessed friend, Tilly. Hart's artlessness is winning and in her own roundabout way she makes some good observations.