Olivia Colman

The Lobster is a surreal, bleak comedy - with claws

Olivia Colman as the leader of a residential retreat where singletons seek new mates, and get turned into animals if they fail? More artful weirdness from the director of Dogtooth.

Proof Olivia Colman will be in final Peep Show series

Robert Webb and David Mitchell have confirmed that Olivia Colman will be returning as Sophie Chapman in the last ever series of Peep Show.

Miles Jupp would be 'surprised' if Rev returns

Rev star and comic Miles Jupp has said he does not envisage a return of the popular TV comedy Rev, in which he starred with Tom Hollander and Olivia Colman.

Olivia Colman: 'My parents don't like Peep Show'

Olivia Colman has admitted that her parents never loved Peep Show - although they didn't mind the swearing.

Who should win best female comedy performance BAFTA?

Olivia Colman, Tamsin Greig, Jessica Hynes and Catherine Tate battle it out for the award, but who gets your vote?

Baftas 2015: what should win best TV comedy?

With nominations for everything from Mrs Brown's Boys to The Wrong Mans, Olivia Colman for Rev., Jessica Hynes for W1A and Matt Berry in Toast of London, this year's comedy sections are a mix of national treasures and off-putting broadness.

The idea behind Chain Reaction, if you haven't listened (why?), is that last week's interviewee becomes next week's interviewer, so we get a long list of famous people (usually comedians or actors) interviewed by a similar person who they admire or have worked with. Each person's interview technique is very different, so the show is hit and miss. The last two week's programmes, which featured Bob Mortimer interviewing Vic Reeves, and then Vic Reeves talking to Olivia Colman, have been tricky listens. I love Reeves and Mortimer but they don't do interviews, really. When they were together it was funny but utterly random; when Reeves talked to Colman, I had to switch off. He had no questions; he didn't really listen to the answers. Argh! It was frustrating.

This week, Colman talked to Sharon Horgan, and I enjoyed the whole show. Colman managed to take the mickey out of the interviewing process ("Do you have a favourite sibling? Do you have a favourite child?") and also get revealing answers. Revealing of both Horgan and herself, which made up a bit for the week before. So we learned that Colman can't cope with too much to do (and then her husband points out that what she's worrying about could be done in a hour), that Horgan prefers writing to acting, and that despite being born in England she considers herself Irish - "it's very important to me that I'm Irish". The chat brought out the contrast between Horgan's career-minded pragmatism and Colman's family-comes-first attitude. As well as both women's wit. Colman was a great host. Give her a show. Nurture the "talent". Manage it.

Radio Times review

"Do you have a legal list?" Olivia Colman asks her interviewee Sharon Horgan. "Sorry, what's that?" responds Horgan, in answer to which Colman informs her it is a list of people you are allowed to sleep with without your husband getting cross. The audience roars with laughter, which soon increases in volume when an innocent Sharon asks, "Can they be dead?" -- not quite making the necrophilic link implied by her wish to have Steve McQueen on her "legal list".

This gives a flavour of the conversation between these two very funny women. Colman's questions cover topics ranging from work--life balance to the joys of nit-combing a child's hair, and Horgan's wickedly witty responses exemplify why she is at the top of her game at the moment.

Radio Times review

Graham Norton, Jonathan Ross and Alan Carr are not going to lose any sleep if they listen to this. Jim Moir, better known as Vic Reeves, is not a natural interviewer. It's his guest, Olivia Colman, who holds the show together, using her ability to ad-lib with wit.

I love this series. I love Vic Reeves. I love Olivia Colman. It's why I chose this as my Pick of the Week. But were it not for Colman's thespian talents there are moments when tumbleweed would have blown through the studio (à la Shooting Stars). She picks up when Reeve's questions or direction of thought trails off, and yet, while he sounds delighted to have got to the end of the show intact, there are some parts where this interview is so funny it should come with its own health warning.

If Olivia Colman had to choose between a plastic hand and a hook, which would she favour? Is she any good with blood? As I said, Reeves is not your typical interviewer, but these surreal questions do encourage Colman to reveal more about herself than she would on a predictable chat show.

And so, I now know that she believes that the path to true love depends upon clutching a fallen eyelash with one's intended and making a wish. And that she can spend hours staring at pictures of men's swollen testicles (in medical books, not real life).

It's a peculiar half-hour, but one I wouldn't have missed for the world.