Nathaniel Parker

Swimming With Men review

Rob Brydon's charm keeps this formulaic comedy afloat.

Although this sitcom has never quite managed to be as good as the sum of its parts, it's been easy enough to watch.

And in the last episode tonight, it's a mini Smack The Pony reunion as we finally meet Tom's ex-wife, who is played by one of Sarah Alexander's former cast mates, Doon Mackichan.

Not only does the former Mrs Tom Marshall have an ability to get up people's noses (a bit like her annoying daughter), she also turns out to have the skills of a cat burglar as she manages to enter a house without actually being let in.

But before all that, Gemma (Alexander) has to cope with another unwelcome house guest - ex-husband Jason (Neil Morrissey), who has been kipping on her sofa since splitting up with Inca.

While assisting Jason with his love life, Gemma herself is still emotionally torn between soppy Tom (Nathaniel Parker) and toyboy Billy (Robert Sheehan) and as this is the final episode of the series, we should finally find out who she's going to choose.

Will she follow her head or her heart? Go for the yurt or the Scotch egg? Don't worry, that last sentence will make sense.

Sarah Alexander has revealed the hardest thing about playing a modern-day Mrs Robinson - snogging younger men. Despite the difficulties of locking lips with less mature actors, the former Coupling star is happy to play the older woman in BBC1 comedy show Me And Mrs Jones.

Sarah, 41, said: "In terms of getting older and moving on to the next stage, I am embracing it. I'm so thrilled to be a central lead in a comedy, particularly for BBC1."

But Sarah - playing Mrs Jones alongside on-screen ex-hubby Neil Morrissey and love interest Nathaniel Parker - confessed she was nervous about shooting steamy scenes with Misfits star Robert Sheehan - who is just 24. She said: "You wonder what they're thinking. You're wondering whether they're dreading it. It's an odd situation to be in."

Me and Mrs Jones opens with a goldfish in a toilet bowl. I can only guess that the goldfish took one look at the script and attempted to escape before his television career suffered irreparable damage.

Of the many unkind epithets suggested by Roget's Thesaurus, 'excruciating' is the one that best describes this show. Until I watched it, I did not realise it was physically possible to grit one's teeth, curl one's toes and clench one's sphincter all at the same time. And stay that way for half an hour.

Purportedly a romantic comedy, it is about as light and fluffy as a breeze block. Not the most sparkling of analogies, I grant you, but better than anything the lazy and witless script of Me and Mrs Jones had to offer.

"Houdini would have trouble getting out of this dress," grumbles our scatty, sexy heroine Gemma, as she writhes around in a store changing room. Houdini? The escapologist who died 88 years ago? Watch out for further thrillingly contemporary references to the general strike, Irish home rule, speakeasies and the disappearance of Amy Johnson.

Where the show strives to charm, it succeeds in irritating. I am a fan of Sarah Alexander, who plays Gemma, but here I found her wackiness so mannered as to be unbearable.

But the worst thing about Me and Mrs Jones is that no part of it rings true - not the characters, not the relationships and definitely not the dialogue. Romantic comedy needs to appear effortless, but every minute of this contrived, constipated monstrosity screams with the strain of it all.

A solidly dependable cast, including Nathaniel Parker and sitcom stalwart Neil Morrissey, tries so desperately hard to unearth humour from the barren comic landscape that I actually began to pity them. This is particularly true of Jonathan Bailey, lumbered with the Herculean and ultimately futile task of lending sympathy to Alfie, Mrs Jones' unremittingly loathsome eldest son, just back from his gap year abroad. Apart from a big mouth, an overinflated ego and a penchant for harassing women on public transport, Alfie also has a best mate in tow, who just might hit it off with his mum over the next five episodes.

This surprisingly standard-issue sitcom from the Green Wing team stars Sarah Alexander (Coupling) as Gemma Jones, divorced from Jason (Neil Morrissey) and juggling maternal duties with an attempt to kick-start her love life. It's the candidates jockeying for boyfriend position who provide the thrust of the action, with safe choice Tom (Nathaniel Parker) vying for pole position with toy boy Billy (Robert Sheehan).

This new comedy has such an impressive pedigree (it's written by Green Wing's Oriane Messina and Fay Rusling, and has a pretty strong cast list) that it's almost inevitable that the first episode will disappoint. But give it a chance because it could be a grower, especially among fans of suburban comedies such as the now defunct My Family and Outnumbered.

Sarah Alexander is perfect as the eponymous Mrs Jones, a scatty divorcee with a very modern family life (for which read complicated and messy). Swilling about in the mix of well-intentioned friends and school-age daughters she's got an ex-husband (Neil Morrissey), a grown-up son who returns from his gap year travels with an attractive friend in tow (Misfits' Robert Sheehan) and a handsome admirer (Nathaniel Parker) who the yummy mummies in the playground all fawn over. By the end of the episode she's snogged a man she barely knows and dragged a half-naked one into her bathroom. So which is the "Me" of the title?

This latest attempt by BBC One at a mainstream sitcom is a ditzy domestic affair about single mother Gemma Jones (Sarah Alexander), who spends her life dealing with her twin girls, her midlife-crisis-suffering ex (Neil Morrissey) and his stereotypical Swedish girlfriend. So when a handsome father (Nathaniel Parker) asks Gemma out on a date while she's on the school run, it's a welcome offer. That is, until her student son returns from a backpacking trip with his flirtatious friend Billy (Robert Sheehan) and Mrs Jones unexpectedly finds she's got more than one love interest. Solidly played by a strong cast, this comedy is gently amusing rather than laugh-out-loud funny.

The good news is that there are laughs aplenty in this hour-long festive edition; the bad is that you'll have to wait at least 10 minutes before they start. That's due to the creaky device of pitching the Harper clan 30 years into the future in order to have flashbacks of their worst (ie most insanely destructive) Christmases past. But the wait is mostly worthwhile as the cast led by Robert Lindsay, Zoë Wanamaker and Nathaniel Parker throw themselves into the fun with abandon.