Nicola Walker

Warm, romantic and BAFTA-winning, Last Tango In Halifax was a bona-fide hit last year, neatly refuting the idea that there's no audience for "stuff about old people" on TV.

It's even getting an American remake with Diane Keaton. So it's no surprise that it has quickly been brought back, nor, given that much of its strength lies in its near real-time pace, that the story resumes moments later.

Yet pacing might prove to be an issue this year, as the reunited sweethearts Alan and Celia (Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid) are now an established couple. Having missed 60 years together, they have surely too much sense to fall out again over minor misunderstandings. Their respective daughters (Nicola Walker and Sarah Lancashire) are still entangled in complicated love lives, but this can't really take over the focus of the series from the older generation. So where will the drama lie?

In the first episode, this isn't really resolved, as Alan recovers from his health scare and Celia organises their wedding, while the younger characters continue to flail. But it's still such a warm and well-observed show - with lovely bits of dialogue and performances - that maybe it doesn't matter.

Determined to prepare Sara (Sue Perkins) for the impending visit from her parents, Toria (Joanna Scanlan) takes her, Justine (Nicola Walker) and Jamie (Dominic Coleman) to her own parents' stately home in the country to give her a "coming-out trial run". A cosy half-hour of affable nonsense, kept afloat by Perkins's ability to be simultaneously droll and vulnerable.

Steve Pemberton guests as a bizarre, equine-obsessed vet inspector who turns up at Sara's very peculiar practice. The place is even more shambolic after Daniel deserts his post to play sex games in his suburban front room. So Sara's simple-minded friend Justine (Nicola Walker) steps in to staff the reception desk, adopting a northern accent because she's a fan of All Creatures Great and Small.

It's a cheerful half-hour of amiable nonsense led by Sue Perkins. I know it hasn't set the world on fire, but its heart is in the right place and the gags are often clever.

Sara's very loud, very angry French ex turns up uninvited and colonises the living room where she melodramatically writhes around on the floor. It's a madly over-the-top, heavily accented turn from the estimable Raquel Cassidy (Jack Dee's long-suffering wife in Lead Balloon).

Meanwhile, Sara (Sue Perkins, also the writer) tries to pluck up the courage to ask out the lovely Eve (Shelley Conn). It's fun and sweet-natured and there's great support from Nicola Walker and Dominic Coleman as Sara's friends, dim Justine and precious Jamie.

Sue Perkins has written and stars in BBC2's new sitcom Heading Out, concerning the adventures of a 40 year-old lesbian vet - that's to say a gay veterinarian rather than a veteran gay - who has yet to come out to her parents.

Some of the support characters are drawn far too obviously to exist as anything other than comic relief, but otherwise Perkins' script is a good one. The plot is clever, the dialogue amusing, and at least one of the sight gags is unforgettable. Plus, it's refreshing - not to say revolutionary - to have a sexually active, lesbian lead character in a sitcom.

The problem, however, is Perkins' acting - namely, that she doesn't bother attempting any. Every one of her lines is delivered with exactly the same sardonic deadpan the comedian usually reserves for panel shows, interviews and TV bake-offs.

Which would be boring but bearable if Heading Out didn't harbour ambitions to belong to that trickiest of genres, the romantic comedy. Perkins' flirtatious banter requires a nuanced performance to steer a course between arch and embarrassing. Nicola Walker, totally wasted in an undemanding best friend role, would have done it brilliantly.

Comedian, Maestro winner, Celebrity Big Brother housemate, Great British Bake Off presenter and possible future Doctor Who, Sue Perkins has somehow managed to neglect writing and starring in her very own sitcom until now.

Here she plays Sara, a vet who's too afraid to tell her parents she's gay. But as her 40th birthday approaches, Sara's loyal band of friends, which includes Nicola Walker from Spooks, have a plan to give her the courage to tell her folks.

Perhaps they could show them the spread from Tatler magazine that hailed Sue as one of Britain's coolest lesbians.

Some exciting guests are lined up for the series including Dawn French and Sue's comedy partner Mel Giedroyc. Tonight the fabulous Mark Heap drops in.

Sue Perkins has become one of the faces of BBC Two in recent years, presenting all maner of food and pop-historical programming. Now she returns to her comic roots in this self-written sitcom, starring as Sara, a successful female vet about to turn 40 - but still frightened to tell her parents (Jeff Rawle and Harriet Walter) that she's gay. Her motley gang of friends set an ultimatum: if Sara fails to reveal her sexuality within six weeks, they will. To make matters even more chaotic, they arrange for her to attend a series of sessions with an eccentric life coach.

In her acting debut, Perkins is likeably beleaguered and sardonic, while there's a strong supporting cast of Nicola Walker (Spooks, Last Tango in Halifax), Dominic Coleman (Miranda), Shelley Conn (Mistresses) and Joanna Scanlan (The Thick of It, Getting On) - not to mention lots of four-legged extras. Guest stars also pop up throughout the six-part run, including June Brown, Steve Pemberton, Mark Heap, Dawn French and Perkins's Great British Bake Off co-host and original comedy partner Mel Giedroyc[/o]. Pitched somewhere between the slapstick Miranda and the sardonic Grandma's House, it's a highly promising, enjoyably daft opener.

Sue Perkins has become ubiquitous at the BBC in the last few years, whether eating peculiar period food or learning to conduct orchestras or telling us about Mrs Dickens/Maria Von Trapp or, as co-host of The Great British Bake-Off, making bad puns about buns. Someone, somewhere, has decided we can't get enough of her. You may have your own feelings about this. Well, here she is again, allegedly going back to her comedy roots with her own sitcom, where she plays Sara, a neurotic vet who's about to turn 40 but hasn't yet managed to tell her parents that she's gay.

Despite being kind of annoying, she has supportive friends (including ever-reliable performers Nicola Walker and Joanna Scanlan) and is able to attract hot ladies like Shelley Conn, who is charmed by Sara's rotten patter and way with extracting barbed wire from dogs' paws.

Around 50 per cent of the show is laboured animal slapstick - there is a dead cat which is lugged around to decreasing effect - and the other half is meant to be touching, as Sara wrestles with her inadequacies and her friends urge her to finally come out to her folks. It's an awkward mix. The comedy just isn't that funny and the sentiment isn't that interesting. At times I felt a bit of second-hand embarrassment and - worst of all - the show reminded me of two grim indulgent sitcoms of years past: Baddiel's Syndrome, in which David Baddiel and his mates failed miserably at doing a Seinfeld, and Rhona, in which Rhona Cameron and her mates (including Perkins' double act and Bake-Off partner Mel Giedroyc) failed at doing an Ellen. What they all have in common is that their stars aren't actually actors but stand-ups, and that the other two only lasted one series. There's a lesson there.

A second series has already been commissioned, which means that this is actually The ­Penultimate Tango In Halifax.

And if that makes things a little awkward, that's nothing compared to the dinner party which forms the backbone of tonight's episode, where you could cut the ­atmosphere with a blunt spoon.

And although, like pensioners driving over the Pennines in the dark, this series might have lost its way a little around the middle, tonight's finale is an absolute triumph.

The cast, led by Derek Jacobi, Anne Reid, Sarah Lancashire and Nicola Walker, have done Sally Wainwright's fabulous script proud, making these characters you can believe in even when they're behaving appallingly.

In fact, especially when they're behaving appallingly, as Celia and her daughter Caroline do tonight.

Tears, laughter and truthfulness are all here in abundance.

Last week Celia was informed that Caroline was in a relationship with another woman - a fact you might have thought had been plonked into the story simply to spice things up a little.

After all, as one character remarks tonight: "It's nowt these days. Nobody bats an eyelid."

On the contrary. The way Celia reacts to this news makes Alan see her in a whole new light.

Geographically they might not have travelled very far in the 60 years they've been apart, but Alan realises he should have been warned by Celia's choice of daily newspaper that there's a huge gulf between them in attitudes.

Let's just say that if only Celia read the Daily Mirror, so much unpleasantness might well have been avoided.

The once frosty Caroline (Sarah Lancashire) is thoroughly thawed, having re-evaluated her life during that long and worrying night when her mum and Alan were missing.

With a spring in her step, she returns to her enviably lovely house in Harrogate to tell her nearly ex-husband John that she is in love. Though with someone else entirely. The look of horror that transfixes his face is an absolute picture (no one can do baffled comedy-appalled quite like Tony Gardner).

Things are even looking up for Alan's daughter Gillian (Nicola Walker) up there on her chilly farm in the wilds, with all sorts of unsuitable men beating a path to her door. Ends tomorrow.