Rosie Cavaliero

TV review: Friday Night Dinner, C4

This is a grimly funny episode full of great lines and fabulous performances, including the dog.

I turned to BBC One on Sunday night as the channel aired a brand new sitcom in the form of Hold The Sunset; a show that had been primarily promoted as John Cleese's big return to TV. Cleese stars as Phil; a slightly crotchety gent who has been in a relationship with his neighbour Edith (Alison Steadman) for several years after their respective partners passed away. The opening of the episode sees Phil attempt to propose marriage to Edith who eventually accepts this along with his offer to move to sunnier climes. However, their future happiness is halted by the arrival of Edith's son Roger (Jason Watkins) who has left his wife to move back into his childhood home and quickly regresses into a childlike state. Later, Roger's wife Wendy (Rosie Cavaliero) arrives at Edith's to confront her husband, however her kindly exterior frustrates her mother-in-law who quickly snaps at her. So, begins the start of a six-week journey where Roger will no doubt get angry about Phil's relationship with his mother and will probably attempt to sabotage it. For a sitcom that was promoted as Cleese's return to the BBC, he has very little to do here once the plot kicks in and Roger arrives back. Phil is presented as somewhat of a stick-in-the-mud but one that stands back and lets the drama unfold rather than doing anything about it himself. Cleese's chemistry with Steadman isn't strong enough to make me believe that the pair have known each other for decades and want to spend their twilight years together. The stand-out performance in Hold The Sunset comes from Jason Watkins who provided the sitcom's only laugh-out-loud moments, however Roger is such a petulant character that it's hard to sympathise with him. Similarly, Rosie Cavaliero's Wendy should be a sympathetic character, but she's painted as such a passive woman that you feel Edith's frustration towards her. Charles McKeown, who's best known for his work with Terry Gilliam, crafts rather obvious comedy situations which feel very tired by 2018 standards. This is best exemplified by the closing set piece which sees Roger getting stuck in the shed window whilst trying to escape an awkward confrontation with Wendy. Hold The Sunset reminds me of David Jason's The Royal Bodyguard, as both were created as star vehicles for comedy legends and both have fallen flat at the first hurdle. Despite a fine comic turn from the always-reliable Watkins, Hold The Sunset failed to make me laugh or sympathise with the characters, so suffice to say I won't be tuning in again.

TV preview: Hold The Sunset, Sunday, BBC One, Episode 2

It's a soft, gentle predictable script given half a kiss of life by a 24 carat cast. Of course there are better things on TV. And better things to do on a Sunday evening at 7.30pm. But I'm sure there are some people out there who like it. Though if they aren't the over-fifties who tweeted me saying it was shite I do wonder who they were.

Hold the Sunset review

Why do bad things happen to good people? Well, not bad exactly, but decidedly mediocre.

TV review: Hold the Sunset

After 39 years away, John Cleese returns to the sitcom format with a cosy affair.

The deliciousness of a bubbly milk, however bubbly, cannot match that of the script and performances in this subversion of period dramas, set on a country estate in 1831 and home to housekeeper Dorothy, who Norman Bates would admire.

Hunderby is a wolf in a stiff corset, its teeth exquisite blades of language which shred characters' dignity and rip into Sunday night bonnet dramas, writers Julia Davis and Barunka O'Shaughnessy crafting sentences which glory in lampooning the literature of that time. A delirious and hysterical work of Gothic imagination to rival Wednesday Addams' diary - I had tears running down both sets of cheeks.

The first of this two part special assembles the scheming of Dorothy, the doomed love affair of Dr Foggerty (Rufus Jones) and Helene (Alexandra Roach), the simpering Hester (Rosie Cavaliero, more on her later), and a violent monkey. A monkey, Rufus Jones tells me, that between takes would wear a smoking jacket and a fez. That's normal by this show's standards.

In Nurse Paul Whitehouse has, with co-writer David Cummings, adapted this multi-role comedy, almost literally fleshing out the characters with much aid from prosthetics.

He plays most of the patients - or service users, as NHS jargon now has it - of the eponymous nurse, Liz (beautifully played by Esther Coles). She's a community psychiatric nurse and in last night's opening episode of four we followed her as she attended to her charges - which seems to involve injecting most of them in the bum with their medication - while visiting them in their homes.

As first sight Liz's patients may seem to be a gallery of grotesques - they include Graham, a morbidly obese young man who can barely move from his bed, a psychotic, agoraphobic ex-prisoner Billy, and ageing lech Herbert (shades of The Fast Show's Rowley Birkin), long past his many sexual conquests - but they are beautifully observed and carefully constructed individuals, people we laugh with, not at.

Whitehouse and Co (aided by Ian Fitzgibbon's adroit direction) capture the huge array of mental health issues, and intelligently address the very real problem that some sufferers have - of people close to them with whom they are in dangerously co-dependent relationships. It's a recognised phenomenon that a loved one can still be jealous of the person getting, as they see it, all the attention, or that they fear the patient becoming well and leading an independent life means their role within it diminishes, and so may try to scupper their recovery.

Other roles in a very strong cast are filled by, among others, Ben Bailey-Smith (aka Doc Brown) as a joky police officer Liz deals with on a frequent basis; Whitehouse's old confrere Simon Day, as Billy's controlling friend Tony; and Rosie Cavaliero, who like Whitehouse plays more than one role - Graham's overfeeding mum and April, a woman who lives alone with her monstrous regiment of cats, eating the same food: "If it's good enough for my little darlings, it's good enough for me."

Nurse is full of pathos and there are no Fast Show punchlines or catchphrases, but there are many, many laughs - often slipped in as throwaway lines or there to undercut the poignancy.

Created with evident affection for the institution of the NHS, and a deep respect for those working in it, Nurse has a real emotional pull while supplying some snortingly good comedy. Warmly recommended.