Morwenna Banks

The cast of Channel 4's sketch show Absolutely are reassembled this week for The Absolutely Radio Show. Morwenna Banks gives us her Little Girl's bracingly candid guide to divorce ("and when your mum saw the pictures on Dad's phone she was very, very cross and did drink a pint of wine even when it was the morning"); Calum Gilhooley calls a company he has recently patronised to ask them to fill in a survey on how he performed as a customer; and a sibling in New Zealand is called with the sad news that Dad has once again taken a turn for the worse. She needs some persuading to book a flight. "Is he going to die this time? What colour is he?"

The professional social services depicted in Playhouse Presents: Damned, the latest in Sky Arts 1's series of one-off comedy-dramas didn't seem to care.

Written by Morwenna Banks and Jo Brand (who also starred), this was Brand's mordant hospital sitcom Getting On transferred to the offices of a council's children's services.

The tropes of this type of comedy were all in place, including restless camera work and naturalistic acting. Brand and Alan Davies played social workers who have been round long enough to instantly recognise a prank call when someone phones in to say they've found a baby in the meat section of Tesco.

Also involved were Rebekah Staton and Kevin Eldon, the latter as Martin, who used to work in the office before suffering "mental health issues" but who's now invited himself back and making himself so useful that no one cares.

Yes, it's formulaic in its way - but when the constituent parts are The Thick Of It, Twenty Twelve and Getting On then it's my kind of formula. Damned is so primed to be made into a full series that it might detonate of its own accord - I hope Sky (or someone else) is there to record the explosion.

Football-based comedies have come and gone unmourned over the years but, despite the distractingly Elton John-like appearance of hero Warren and a general "British Family Guy" air, the pedigree of the scriptwriters and actors - from Simon Nye to Morwenna Banks - ensures this one is eminently watchable. Tonight, manic Brainsford United obsessive Warren unwisely persuades his reluctant wife and child to paint their faces for a big cup tie. There's a big cheerleader initiative, too, but all comes to grief before half-time.

Radio Times review

With the World Cup lurking enticingly on the horizon, this animated sitcom about a hapless everyman football freak is pitched somewhere between Family Guy, Uncle and Soccer AM. Unfortunately, it's not as funny as any of them.

There's no shortage of talent involved: Spy's Darren Boyd stars as Warren; Johnny Vegas is the imaginatively monikered coach Fat Baz; and Morwenna Banks (or Peppa Pig's mum to the UK's entire toddler population) plays drippy son Harrison. But the stereotypical main protagonist lacks the satirical edge of a Homer Simpson or a Peter Griffin, and you might find yourself yearning to slap him out of his soccercentric stupor.

If you're disappointed there's no Dragons' Den tonight, take comfort in Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse's version, which is almost as good. Other highlights in an undeniably patchy edition (the ongoing Canal Five sketch is a stinker) include Whitehouse's remarkable transformation into a physically accurate Larry David from Curb Your Enthusiasm and their take on a Mike Leigh film that has Morwenna Banks doing a superb impersonation of Alison Steadman in Abigail's Party.

Funniest sketch of the night award goes once again to the Minor Royals with Enfield politely asking a homeless man who's sleeping rough whether he's doing his Duke of Edinburgh.

Gloomsbury (Radio 4, Friday) is the Bloomsbury of Harold Nicholson, Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf and Violet Trefusis as re-imagined by clever Sue Limb and recreated by a brilliant cast (Miriam Margolyes, Alison Steadman, Nigel Planer, Morwenna Banks, Jonathan Coy). It bustles along, shifting assorted real-life infatuations, elopements and enthusiasms into the higher planes of nonsense. Oddly, however, the thrust of the performances seemed greater than the grip of the narrative.

"It is the autumn of 1922, give or take a year or two," rolls out the upper-class, Noël Coward-esque voice of the unnamed narrator of this six-part comedy drama. Cut to Vera Sackcloth-Vest (played with crazed gusto by the fabulous Miriam Margolyes), writer, gardener and transvestite, who is struggling with her staff at Sizzlinghurst Castle. Why do they insist on calling her madam instead of sir? Country life in Kent is so tedious and Vera longs for some excitement. What she needs is to elope with a lover, but first she had better run this past her devoted husband, Henry.

Writer Sue Limb echoes the literary styles of the Bloomsbury Set with pin-point accuracy. Our introduction to Ginny Fox (a brilliantly perceptive, if rather cruel, take on Virginia Woolf, portrayed with obvious relish by Alison Steadman) has the introspective writer staring at a crack in the ceiling for hours and being reminded of her love for Sackcloth-Vest.

How long it will be before these two can escape the drudgeries of normal life (in vast country estates!) and elope with one another is the subject of this opening episode. The writing and acting are both faultless and the series cast includes other great comic names such as Morwenna Banks, Nigel Planer and John Sessions, who crops up as saucy novelist DH Lollipop in future weeks.

This is a real Bohemian rhapsody - and I bet it moves to TV!

The generous sexual morés of Bloomsbury have been a gift to satirists for decades, and Sue Limb becomes the latest writer to unwrap their comic potential. It is an Autumn afternoon at Sizzlinghurst Castle where writer Vera Sackcloth-Vest is planning one of her Sapphic elopements and wants to tidy the garden before she goes. "I must just tie up Mrs Herbert Stevens," she cries. "I don't want her thrashing about in a gale." Miriam Margolyes stars as Vera, while Alison Steadman and Morwenna Banks play her inamorata, Ginny Fox and Venus Traduces.

This show and bad language have always been firm friends. But there are so many F-words in the season's special two-part opener it's as though Gordon Ramsay wrote the script.

The Chatsworth Estate residents have good reason to be all sweary - half find themselves evicted from their homes.

It's part of Operation New Start, a multi-agency crackdown on benefit cheats and other bad eggs.

Considering most of Frank's neighbours don't know the meaning of an honest day's work, or what taxes actually are, they will be busy people.

Especially as the newly homeless refuse to go down without a fight.

With many seeking shelter at The Jockey, they unite and declare war on New Start and its front woman, Carmen Kenaway, played by the brilliant Morwenna Banks. The Chatsworth war continues tomorrow.