Nicola Walker

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.

Sally Wainwright's tale of an old flame rekindled after 60 years is beautifully written and acted, and it moves along at an engagingly ungeriatric clip. Following last week's adventure Alan (Derek Jacobi) and Celia (Anne Reid) are in high spirits, and events have emboldened their daughters Caroline (Sarah Lancashire) and Gillian (Nicola Walker) to move on with their lives. But then Caroline reveals her plans to her feckless husband. Fans note: the final episode is tomorrow.

Aged lovebirds Celia and Alan (Anne Reid and Derek Jacobi) potter happily through their new life together as their families fall apart around them. Celia's brittle daughter Caroline (Sarah Lancashire) rages against the infuriating and inept drunken man of straw she married, while Alan's daughter Gillian (Nicola Walker) is humiliated by that nasty piece of work she's sleeping with.

This all sounds desperately soapy, but it isn't, though things get a bit weird by the end with some nonsense about a haunted country house that feels like it belongs in another drama altogether.

Still, writer Sally Wainwright likes to spring surprises (and there are quite a few of those in this episode) as Alan and Celia take the next step in their relationship. Caroline, meanwhile, drops her guard in that lovely big house in Harrogate so we glimpse the well of loneliness that lies beneath her flinty exterior.

Despite its charm it was difficult to see how Sally Wainwright's romantic comedy could sustain itself for another five episodes after ageing Yorkshire love-birds Alan (Derek Jacobi) and Celia (Anne Reid) announced they were getting married last week. Fear not, though, this second part proves just as engaging as the back stories of the extended families led by their put-upon daughters, headmistress Caroline (Sarah Lancashire) and farmer Gillian (Nicola Walker), develop into an entertainingly fraught family saga.

There's nothing too shocking about Last Tango in Halifax, a rather sweet and gentle love story in six parts about two elderly singletons who rekindle their romance from 60 years earlier.

Episode one features an incident of juvenile crime and a car chase, but that is about as racy as things get. Instead, the production wisely concentrates on its two leads, Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid, as they quietly go about their business of acting everyone else off the screen. Nicola Walker and Sarah Lancashire, as the couple's respective grown-up daughters, are provided with substantial subplots of their own, but it will be the incomparable Jacobi and Reid that will draw and hold the audience.

The ever-wonderful Anne Reid and Derek Jacobi lead this 'it's never too late' love story from writer Sally Wainwright (At Home With the Braithwaites, Scott & Bailey). Celia and Alan fancied each other at school 60 - yes, 60 - years earlier but nothing came of it. Now, thanks to the wonder of Facebook, these silver surfers are back in touch and can finally act on their feelings. That's if they can get over the lifetime of baggage they've got trailing behind, notably grown-up daughters (prim Sarah Lancashire, bolshie Nicola Walker) who have issues of their own.

There are some titles that make my heart sink. Last Tango in Halifax (BBC1) was one of them, because I knew exactly what I was in for from the very start; a light, bitter-sweet rom-com with plenty of outdoor shots of the Yorkshire countryside to draw in the same viewers who lapped up the James Herriot vet tales. With not a hint of butter. And so it proved. Within seconds of their first appearance on screen, every character's life story was pretty much established. The widowed grandparents who used to fancy each other as kids - will they, won't they get together, what do you think? - the struggling grownup children and their dead or feckless partners, and the grandchildren making their way in the world. The only part of the first episode that took me by surprise, was Caroline's (Sarah Lancashire) lesbian dalliance with one of her teachers. Though on reflection, I should probably have seen that one coming, too.

Actually, that wasn't the only surprise. Or the biggest one, which was that despite it all being terribly familiar and predictable, Last Tango was not at all bad. It was the quality of the acting that made the show work. While I couldn't help wondering what Derek Jacobi (Alan) and Anne Reid (Celia) might have done with a more challenging script, I couldn't fault their commitment. It's not that often a pair of 70-year-olds get to take centre stage in a rom-com and they did so with charm, coyness and experience; they even managed to make the ridiculous car chase feel slightly less ridiculous. God knows how.

The rest of the cast weren't so shabby either. Both Nicola Walker (Gillian) and Sarah Lancashire have expressions that can convey a world of pain without saying a word - a distinct advantage here - helpfully glossing over most of the clunkier elements of the plot. So against my expectations, I found myself making a note to watch next week's episode. Even though I have still got a fair idea of exactly what's going to happen.

There hasn't been a good series about "second time around lovers" since Nineties sitcom As Time Goes By. This charming comedy-drama ends that drought in style. Celia Dawson (Anne Reid) and Alan Buttershaw (Derek Jacobi) are both widowed and haven't seen each other for 60 years. When the old flames are reunited via Facebook, their feelings are reignited - and they discover that it was a twist of fate that separated them in the first place.

This is superior fare, based on writer Sally Wainwright's (Scott & Bailey) own mother's internet romance. It's also directed by Doctor Who alumnus Euros Lyn and made by estimable production company Red. However, it's the performances that truly elevate it - not just from classy leads Reid and Jacobi who are amusingly irascible and sweetly bumbling, respectively, but a strong supporting cast which includes Sarah Lancashire, Nicola Walker, Tony Gardner and Ronni Ancona. All come into their own over the six episodes, as the lovers' families are thrown together amid sub-plots involving bisexuality, alchoholism and a murder mystery. Watch out for a neat surprise in the final scene of this opener.