Miranda Hart

One of the best things about Miranda Hart's sitcom is her old schoolfriend Tilly, played by the inestimable Sally Phillips. This week, she tries to fix up her old mate mate "Kongers" with a blind date, "Dreamboat Charlie" (Adrain Scarborough). When that doesn't work, she has to suffer the indignity of her mother setting her up.

Miranda Hart is a distinctly amiable and engaging comic whose funny bones are as prodigious as her height. Hart, a stand-up, made her way on to TV via the exemplary Smack the Pony, the execrable Hyperdrive and, latterly, the excellent Not Going Out, in which she channelled Count Duckula's Nanny - an oversized hen who is impossible to dislike. All of which has led to her own show, which at first felt rather twee, what with all her knowing glances to camera and the actors' waving over their names as the credits rolled à la Dad's Army. Really, who do you think you are kidding?

But, to Hart's credit, the series has picked up, and its latest outing, which saw her taking a holiday - to Thailand, she told her friends, but actually around the corner to a luxury retreat - had me in fits. Not for its originality of premise - taking on a self-improvement lecturer's persona and playing merry hell with it is not exactly mind-blowing - nor the farce (one of the friends she lied to turns up as an "escort" she mistakenly ordered) but perhaps because it is impossible not to warm to someone so at ease with their own inadequacies.

Promoting her show Big Top, Amanda Holden asked the salient question: "In this current climate who wants to watch a desperate family in their living room? They want escapism, colour and clowns - even if they're rubbish!" Well, Amanda, sorry to disappoint, but I'd rather spend the rest of this seemingly never-ending crunch watching Miranda Hart and her friends struggling to make something of their lives than another second of you sending in the buffoons.

Over the past three weeks, word of mouth has steadily been growing about new BBC Two comedy, Miranda. At first glance, it's a rather curious proposition: a star vehicle for Miranda Hart, which is sort of in the style of an old-school sitcom, features Tom Ellis and Patricia Hodge, and has a mixture of slapstick style gags and great observational wit. On paper, there's no way this show would work, and for the first few minutes of an episode you're thinking 'what the hell is this?'

But persevere with it, as many have done, and the delights of this show start to become apparent. Miranda is a much warmer presence than some of her other TV appearances might have implied. Her pieces to camera are actually more endearing than annoying most of the time, and the supporting cast look like they're having a lot of fun.

Yes, it's couched in old sitcom values, but that's not neccessarily a bad thing. There's something rather sweet and familiar about it, even down to the old Croft and Perry style end credit waving sequence. A lot of the humour in here feels real and accessible. And if you're still not convinced - Grace Dent thinks it's marvellous, and she never lies.

Miranda Hart's sitcom is ridiculously silly, and that's just part of the reason why I like it so much. Tonight, the joke shop owner decides that, as a single woman, she is carefree enough to jet off on holiday at a moment's notice. But to avoid the hassle of long-distance travel, she books into a hotel across the road...

Miranda and the man from Skins

This week's episode is the directors (the fabulous Juliet May) favourite script. And I think the one I probably enjoyed doing the most. That could have been something to do with the dancing to Billy Joel.

One simple creative decision makes this infectious comedy sing: having Miranda Hart break the fourth wall and address us directly. Allowing her warmly manic alter ego to glance, mug and chat to camera makes us feel in on the joke. Few comedy performers have enough innate charm to carry such a performance off, but Hart does. Tonight, another unapologetically creaky story sees Miranda go on holiday to a hotel just round the corner.

Canned laughter is not canned!

Every single review/preview of Miranda Hart's new show, Miranda on BBC Two, that I've read, including the many positive ones, refers to the sound of the studio audience heard during the show either as canned, or as a "laugh track". Canned laughter, on a sitcom? Don't make me laugh ... it's the real thing.

Radio Times review

I bet girls of all ages - little 'uns and young teens - love Miranda, and not just because its heroine, played by writer/actor/comic Miranda Hart, is so readily identifiable as a socially inept, galumphing owner of a joke shop whose lack of guile leads her into frequently cringe-making situations.

There's something innocent about Miranda, despite a handful of risque jokes. There was a running gag in the first episode about a consignment of chocolate penises, which some male comics would have killed stone dead with either smut or depravity. Yet in Miranda it was just silly and you'd have to be a Trollopian cleric to take offence.

The comedy in Miranda is old-fashioned, with a classic studio sitcom set up. Hart, making a virtue of her above-average height, throws herself into physical comedy.

I bet kids loved the bit in the first episode where she was on the dancefloor with her handsome crush and her skirt fell down, or when she fell over piles of boxes for no reason other than her awkwardness. Insecure girls, too, probably adore Miranda's refusal to be cowed by her prettier, more popular friends, a pair of screeching materialist harridans pixilated by thoughts of marriage and wedding dresses.

Television is engaged in a constant quest to find a family sitcom that, in theory, everyone can cosily sit down to watch without having to stop up granny's or the kids' ears with cotton wool during the mucky bits.

Somebody probably thinks that Big Top fits the bill perfectly, but they're wrong. In the case of Big Top "family friendly" means "not funny" and it's peppered with gags that are inappropriate for a family audience. But maybe in Miranda telly has found what it's long been looking for.

Miranda goes to the gym

Miranda introduces episode three, and admits that some of the gym stunts she has done before in real life.

Miranda Hart, as brilliant in the second episode as in the first, blames boarding school for her farcical combination of frustrated randiness and Blyton-like inhibition. In a series of inspired clownings, she manages both to retain and repel the object of her lustful heart, chef Gary.