Pauline Collins

The Time of Their Lives review - forgettable

Despite solid work by Joan and Pauline Collins, this tale of a fading film star fails to fly.

Joan & Pauline Collins escape from retirement home

Filming has begun on Joan Collins new romp: a film called The Time Of Their Lives in which the 83-year-old star cavorts around France's ÎIe de Ré.

Alongside dialogue about being "twatted with an iron bar", there's Pauline Collins being mumsy and Bobby Ball talking about his toilet issues. Sarah Hooper's suburban comedy drama is painted with such broad brushstrokes the result is a weird hybrid of Shameless and Terry and June. The cast is culled from every soapy drama you've ever seen and joined in the second series by Casualty's Claire Goose who Lisa (Sally Lindsay) befriends at the gym, and George Sampson as Jim's teenage son Gary. Shame it doesn't produce the laughs it should.

Sky got it right with the gently witty Starlings and the returning Mount Pleasant is woeful by comparison. Where the former had charm, this Mancunian comedy is neither dramatic nor funny. At least it brings its female cast to the fore but they deserve a better script. In the opener to season two, Sue (Pauline Collins) gets cooking while everyone heads over to the Johnsons to watch the big game on TV.

Sky One orders second series of Mount Pleasant

Sky One has ordered a second series and a Christmas Special of its comedy/drama series Mount Pleasant starring Sally Lindsay, Pauline Collins and Daniel Ryan.

Sarah Hooper's series about the perky goings on in a recession-untroubled Mancunian suburb is billed as comedy drama, as if to suggest you're getting two things for the price of one, but in truth it's short on both, unless you count hackneyed sexual intrigue as drama and affected, sub-Coronation Street dialogue as comedy. It's comfort telly, relying on a cast of familiar faces including Pauline Collins, Tommy Ball, Angela Griffin and Sally Lindsay as Lisa, whose over-indulgent lunches lead to speculation that she is pregnant.

When a secretary wrongly assumes Lisa is pregnant, the good news is broadcast around the cul de sac quicker than you can say: I'm just a bit tubby. Her thrilled parents - played by a deliciously batty Pauline Collins and Bobby Ball - are soon banning Lisa from eating cream cheese ("do you want your baby to be born with pigeon feet?") to her and hubby Dan's utter mystification. Meanwhile, Shelley decides that her biological clock is also ticking ...

It's a giggle. Unfortunately, Mount Pleasant isn't content to be a farce and the scenes that strive to be more sentimental fall flat. Watching Lisa and Dan in the bath, swigging wine and singing along to Oasis's Live Forever, you can't help wishing Collins and Ball would pop in with a dopey gag.

The sight of Bianca (Sian Reeves playing yet another over-the-top maneater like in Cutting It and Emmerdale) ­highlights the obvious ingredients chucked into this new sitcom.

And that's before we meet Sue (Pauline Collins) who arrives with a cry of "Only me!" and Barry (Bobby Ball).

On the other hand, it's a cut above Candy Cabs, filmed nearby, although that's not saying much.

For Mount Pleasant, read upmarket Hale in Cheshire, home to Lisa and husband Dan - played by Sally Lindsay and Daniel Ryan.

In the first instalment, Lisa fears Dan has forgotten their 10th anniversary and fumes when gorgeous boss/friend (Angela Griffin) moves in and goes about dressed like she's doing a cover shoot for Nuts

The cast also includes Liza Tarbuck and Ainsley Howard and you get a vision of the casting director throwing a big net into a pool marked: The Usual Suspects.