Niky Wardley

Review: Twelfth Night, National Theatre

Tamsin Greig leads a triumphant Twelfth Night at The National, ingeniously re-imaging one of Shakespeare's most bitter misanthropes as Malvolia. The production is gloriously wacky and stunning to behold. Truly I saw the future of theatre, and it was beautiful.

Twelfth Night at The National Theatre - review

At a running time of around three hours including interval, there is nothing left out of this version of Twelfth Night but it's surprising how the time flies. This is a fun production with the emphasis on the many comedic elements of the story rather than dwelling on the melodramatic side. Everyone plays their part to produce a really great evening's entertainment and present the Bard at his absolute best.

A toe-curling date was the centrepiece of Love And Marriage, when retired lollipop lady Pauline (Alison Steadman) went for a drink and a movie with widowed teacher Peter (Bruce Alexander).

We know that Pauline is a dating novice - she's only been out with one man, and she's been married to him for 40 years. But last week she left him, and moved in with her flighty sister (Celia Imrie), who really should have explained some dating basics. Such as, if your hubby phones you during the date, don't answer. And if you do answer, don't have a blazing row. And if you do have a blazing row, remember that your date can hear everything you're saying about him.

The show is fragmenting into a collection of sketches, starring energetic but two-dimensional characters. The most interesting is daughter Heather (Niky Wardley), boiling with jealousy if her younger husband even speaks to another woman.

There's a sort of charm about Pauline's car-mad husband Ken, too. When Heather tells him she's just seen her mum being whisked off for her date in Peter's flashy E-Type Jaguar, Ken looks torn between feeling hurt and being impressed. 'E-Type? What year?' he asks.

Pauline's sister is thoroughly dislikable - the sort of shallow, brittle schemer that Imrie plays so well. Envious for decades of her sibling's happy marriage, she's delighted to help break it up. 'You've left a world of pain, not a man,' she assures Pauline.

This is the sort of comedy-drama that signals its 60-something characters are Being Free and Living Life, by having them blow up a space hopper and bounce round the living room. But like Dates [Channel 4's drama], it needs to start tying its story strands together.

Rebecca Front, er, fronts this new proper British Sky comedy about the gang of misfits and no-hopers running the titular health club. She plays blonde bitch-in-chief Alison Crabbe, the woman charged with sorting out botched beauty treatments, short short-wearing handymen with big penises and sadistic fitness instructors.

Cheryl Fergison, Niky Wardley and Tim Healy are among the ensemble cast of The Spa, which comes from actor and Benidorm creator Derren Litten. You may want to think about cancelling your chemical face peel after this.

Sky has thrown down the gauntlet to the BBC lately. Daring dramas, comedies that actually raise a chuckle and even the annexation of one of the Beeb's comedy crown jewels in Alan Partridge. How will Auntie respond? With a second series of piss-weak sitcom In With The Flynns, that's how. The Flynns are a family of rough diamond Mancs: think the Royles, if they spruced themselves up for a visit from the Queen. Tonight, Liam and Caroline (Will Mellor and Niky Wardley) turn vigilante, Jim catches a big fish and Chloe introduces an obnoxious new friend. But the dialogue is flat, the jokes telegraphed and the characterisation superficial. Sure, it's gentle family entertainment. But nothing about this cardboard cut-out family feels recognisable or real enough to succeed on even those limited terms.

If reality television has taught us anything, it's that the stuff people say in real life is funnier than anything script writers can dream up. This new entry to the family sitcom stable nods briefly in the direction of real life, but then takes all its dialogue from 'The Big Sitcom Book Of Unlikely Conversation'.

It's a pity - despite that niggle this is shaping up to be a decent half-hour, with Caroline and Liam (Niky Wardley and Will Mellor) competing this week to see who's the best parent.

A mainstream, family-based sitcom billed as "warm" and "authentic" sets all the alarm bells ringing. This new six-parter written by Daniel Peak is a kind of aspirational working-class companion to the bourgeois settings of Outnumbered and My Family, but if anything, it's even more flat-footed. It feels incredibly dated, from the staging to the characters to the jokes. Will Mellor and Niky Wardley are the parents working extra shifts to take the family on holiday; Warren Clarke is the best bit as the grouchy grandfather looking for romance.

With the last series of My Family starting later this month, In With The Flynns picks up the sitcom baton and sprints off with it.

Weirdly, both series have American roots. My Family was created by Fred Barron, while The Flynns is executive produced by Caryn Mandabach whose name you'll have seen attached to such monoliths as Roseanne, 3rd Rock from the Sun and Nurse Jackie.

This is a British version of her US show Grounded for Life and it's written by George Jeffrie and Bert Tyler-Moore - the two big comedy brains behind Pete Versus Life and Star Stories.

Where My Family feels forced and artificial to the point of being almost physically painful to watch, In With The Flynns, with its seamless use of flashbacks, is much more relaxed.

Set in Manchester, it stars Will Mellor and Niky Wardley as Liam and Caroline, the harassed young parents of a teenage daughter Chloe and two younger sons.

Warren Clarke plays Liam's dad Jim and Liam's brother Tommy is played by Craig Parkinson - who you'll recognise as the only probation worker to survive the Asbo Five in Misfits.

With Liam and Caroline too busy to keep a proper eye on their kids, it's left to Tommy this week to give them the benefits of his worldly wisdom.

If you're a fan of Seinfeld, you'll probably spot that Tommy has a touch of the Kramer about him - he is a law unto himself and completely Teflon coated so that blame never sticks.

Judging from this first outing, The Flynns could be with us for even longer than My Family has managed.

Straight-ahead family sitcoms are a hard trick to pull off, but when it works, it's a trick that can run and run (look at My Family, starting its 11th series next week). Here's a new contender, loosely based on the US hit Grounded for Life (which briefly aired on ITV) and featuring a likeable, mildly chaotic Manchester family. Parents Liam and Caroline had their first child when they were still teenagers and are now in their 30s and struggling with three. Liam's unreliable brother Tommy should help with the parenting chores but only adds to their woes. The first episode revolves around the couple's efforts to work the overtime necessary to pay for a holiday in the sun - neglecting their children along the way: one has her tongue pierced, another gets bullied and the third takes to scavenging from bins. The comic rhythms are creaky at this stage, but Will Mellor and Niky Wardley are convincing as the hassled parents, while the star of the show looks to be Craig Parkinson as wayward Uncle Tommy, who tonight dishes out advice to his nephew on martial arts.