Rebekah Staton

Home review

Yes, Home is underpinned by a strong social, political message, but like all good comedies, it's ultimately about relationships and the ridicule of human foibles, from Peter's intransigence to the bureaucracy of the Home Office.

Home is the perfect mix of funny and tragic

What happens when you open the boot of the family car to find an unexpected passenger all the way from Syria?

Binging: Pulling

Sharon Horgan's much-missed sitcom is very funny, but, perhaps more importantly, it broke all sorts of television taboos. Here's Hannah Dunleavy on why you should put it on your to-watch list. Immediately.

Raised By Wolves: saluting a hugely likeable sitcom

As Raised By Wolves concludes its ace second series on Channel 4, we tip our caps to a cleverly written sitcom...

Caz and Caitlin Moran's excellent and highly quotable comedy returns to the Garry household for a second series, and 16-year-old Germaine (Helen Monks) is still banging on about her bodily functions to all and sundry. After mum Della (Rebekah Staton) switches off the wi-fi ("I'm not paying £29.99 a month to beam pixels through the friggin' air"), the Garry children slope off to the library, where Germaine's flirting practice leads to the unimaginable: an actual date. She preps for it by dousing her wrists in her own vaginal fluid.

Raised By Wolves series 2 episode 1: 'fizzingly funny'

Raised By Wolves packs more ideas and invention into one episode than lesser comedies do in an entire series. Besides, any programme where the favoured insult is "wazzock" is fine by me.

Back to 2006 for the first episode of Sharon Horgan and Dennis Kelly's sitcom about three filthy wastrels from Penge. Donna (Horgan), drifting towards marriage with rancid manchild Karl (Cavan Clerkin), realises on her hen night that she's got a lot of aimless partying still to do with her pals (Tanya Franks and Rebekah Staton). The extent to which female characters get all the funny lines by revealing their rotten souls would still feel groundbreaking today. And this opener is flab-free: one killer scene after another.

"Right, let's do some parenting, then," maintains formidable mother-of-six Della in Caroline and Caitlin Moran's perky sitcom, based on the sisters' home-schooled childhood in Wolverhampton. The script is smart and tangy but it's the sprightly acting that makes this Channel 4 comedy zing, especially from the always excellent Rebekah Staton as the straight-talking Della (she's claims to have channelled Clint Eastwood for the role), Helen Monks as quick-witted Germaine and Alexa Davies as cerebral Aretha.

Series one of Caitlin and Caz Moran's loosely autobiographical sitcom about the unorthodox Garry brood bows out. Desperate to corner newly single Lee, Germaine (Helen Monks) enlists her sisters - misanthropic Aretha (Alexa Davies) and meek Yoko (Molly Risker) - for a night out at an infamous Wolverhampton club. Cue fake incest, silly scheming and a boy-themed revelation for Germaine. Elsewhere, mum Della (Rebekah Staton) has an unconventional date with the suitor she met at Uncle Natie's barbecue.