Rebecca Front

Rebecca Front interview

As the political sitcom returns, Rebecca Front, who plays Nicola Murray MP, tells TV Choice what's new...

Rebecca Front reveals how she deals with being Tuckered

The BBC's political satire returns to our screens this autumn and gets its teeth into coalition government.

Chris Addison will be pleased with this picture - there is very little bare flesh on show and certainly nothing suggestive of his nether regions. In a terribly British section of his interview by friend and fellow comic thespian Rebecca Front, they discover a shared aversion to nudity, especially their own, in performances.

As Addison remarks, his modesty is based upon his body resembling a stick man made out of Twiglets. Their similarities do not end here, however: both confess to having been goody-two-shoes at school and how many other modern comedians can claim to have been part of madrigal groups? Middle-class and brainy does not have to mean smug, though, and so this interview rubs along nicely. I look forward to Addison asking the questions of Derren Brown next week.

Psychobitches was hilarious: notable women from history psychoanalysed by Rebecca Front. Best was Edith Piaf who lay on the couch and produced a list: "1958, 1959, most of 1960, buying those overpriced dusters from that rough boy who came to the door on Thursday afternoon, my lesbian phase, wearing rollerblades to my father's funeral, my reggae phase, the hit and run, both hit and runs..." Front: "So quite a few regrets, then?"

The central conceit was that a succession of famous women from history subject themselves to the enquiries of a shrink, played with cooing aplomb by Rebecca Front. Joan of Arc is shown to be a petulant teen in a breastplate who justifies herself by saying "God made me do it", Eva Braun lists the virtues of her new boyfriend ("When he walks into a room, everyone really respects him") before confiding, "He might be a bit of a racist", and Beatrix Potter reveals that animals tell her mucky stories.

I laughed immoderately at Sharon Horgan's portrayal of Frida Kahlo with a long droopy moustache, blithely ignoring the shrink's subtle enquiries ("Is it possible that you've ... cultivated something that might be keeping him at arm's length?") and at Sheila Reid doing Mother Teresa as a chain-smoking Northern harridan. But the humour relied tiresomely on the juxtaposition of primness and smut, on Jane Austen and blowjobs, the Bible and bonking. In one sketch, Mary Whitehouse reveals a liking for gay porn. Mary Whitehouse? Which decade are we in now?

At times I wished the women had been invited to improvise. They might have brought some welcome diversion from the writers' one-track minds.

'Wearing rollerblades to my father's funeral. My reggae phase. Going to Butlin's and sucking off that redcoat...' These, in case you were wondering, are among the many regrets of Edith Piaf. They give a good flavour of Psychobitches, this 'Playhouse' closer which imagines the musings of (in)famous female figures on the psychiatrist's couch. Mary Whitehouse is obsessed with Tom of Finland, Mother Theresa smokes, swears and gives of an air of simmering menace and Eva Braun is walking on air after meeting a new fella ('he's really going places'). The targets are soft and many of the gags verge on the obvious. But it's brought gleefully to life by another superb cast which includes Sharon Horgan, Rebecca Front, Sam Spiro and Catherine Tate. Not big or clever, but its unapologetic silliness carries the day.

The performances in Psychobitches are funnier than the one-track script in the latest addition to the Playhouse strand. Directed by Jeremy Dyson (The League of Gentlemen), the comedy sees a succession of famous women apparently revealing their true selves in front of a questioning psychiatrist (Rebecca Front, above). Cue an aggressive Mother Teresa (Sheila Reid), a lovestruck Eva Braun (Catherine Tate), a sex-obsessed Jane Austen (Sharon Horgan) and a deluded Joan of Arc (Katy Brand).

"Do you need more acting lessons?" Rebecca Front's fame-hungry mum asks her struggling son (Simon Amstell).

Amstell's acting met with low-level sniping in the first series of his droll sitcom, but it barely matters when he's surrounded by a cast this funny, notably Front and James Smith. Here, Simon's TV career has nosedived, so he's reduced to living at his gran's and exposed to family tensions. Amstell's meta-comedy is, in the words of Larry David, pretty, pretty good.

Bafta TV Awards - past winners: Rebecca Front

"The world went into slow motion. I was right in the middle of a row - one of the many reasons I was sure I wouldn't win".

Writer Jeremy Front (he does the marvellous Charles Paris mysteries among many other plays) and his sister, the actress Rebecca Front (On the Hour, The Thick of It, Lewis), teamed up to invent this series of fictional biographies of imaginary females. She plays all five of this week's amazing ladies. He plays the interviewer, spending a day with each to get to know them. They begin with stage and TV psychic Nicky Markham. You may think, as you listen, that you have encountered Nicky (or someone quite uncannily like her) before.