Ruth Jones (I)

This comedy drama is the polar opposite of escapism - its gentle, underwhelming, slightly humdrum stylings will be vaguely familiar to everyone. That's presumably the point: Ruth Jones has always been strong on the minutiae of day-to-day life. In tonight's second episode, she goes one step further and discards one of the main potential drama-triggers of this series. Elsewhere, confusion over paternity continues, Paula faces a staffing crisis at the undertakers (surely her boozing is a minor flashpoint waiting to happen?) and Luke's Canadian adventure is jeopardised. All in all, the likeable performances and breezy script just about make up for the fact that nothing much is happening. All the same, this often feels like a dead heat between amiable and aimless.

Stella's freewheeling family is one big ball of confusion tonight. Her kids are on emotionally challenging ground, with Ben pining for a girl who doesn't even notice him and daughter Emma feeling left behind when Sunil starts a new life at uni. But it's Stella (Ruth Jones) who's most in a spin as she tries to get her head around how she's had babies with a clutch of different dads. Then fate intervenes...

That's the trouble with having so many good characters in your multi-stranded ensemble comedy drama: what if part of the show ends up being worthy of its own series? Ruth Jones and her writers will be in that predicament if they keep coming up with such good scenes for Elizabeth Berrington as Paula, the randy, boozy undertaker who this week has to face the fact that her randy, dopey husband Dai is hopeless at the job. At the very least she needs to get someone else to apply make-up to the corpses.

Everything else seems monochrome in comparison, as Luke returns home and Alun's luck worsens still further when his attempt to raise money by flogging old tat ends up making a massive loss.

But there's a lovely subplot in which 13-year-old Ben tries to learn about the ladies, and a surprise in store.

Like another of Sky1's comedies, Starlings, Ruth Jones's series remains adept at observing the humour and hardships of life. As season two continues, Stella (Jones) has confessed to Sean (Kenny Doughty) about her night with her ex (Mark Lewis Jones) and not surprisingly he is planning to leave Pontyberry - but there is a twist in the tale. Her mood isn't improved when she hears that her eldest child, Luke (Craig Gallivan), has been deported from Canada, while undertaker Paula (Elizabeth Berrington) falls out with Dai (Owen Teale) because of his tendency to make-up the dead to "look like Joan Rivers".

How much more lovable can Ruth Jones's Stella get? The frazzled heroine isn't having much luck, what with Luke being deported and Sean storming out after finding out she slept with her ex. You can't fight the urge to be her cheerleader, especially with the prospect of a lonely baby scan looming. Stella's extended family offer so much cheeriness and warmth, from best mate Paula's gallows humour at the undertakers to her orange ex-husband Karl and his brain-free philosophy. "Feel them guns," he orders, after giving little Ben his first workout. "Proper little Jodie Marsh, in't he?"

Sky1's Stella pulls in 675,000

Show written by and starring Gavin and Stacey's Ruth Jones picks up 2.7% share between 9pm and 10pm.

Ruth Jones interview

'Thank you for saying "different from", not "different to", that's my big bugbear at the moment,' smiles Ruth Jones at the end of our chat about the second series of her hit comedy drama Stella. It throws me off balance for a second. It's a new one on me to have my syntax applauded by an interviewee.

Ruth Jones's series about the chaotic life of a divorcee in the Welsh valleys has always had a bit of steel beneath its joyful family dynamics and cosily eccentric characters. On the evidence of the opening episode of series two, there'll be more drama this year in the aftermath of the first run's cliffhanger: Stella (Jones) might not live happily ever after with her new man Sean, since the baby she's expecting might not be his, and her rekindled old flame, Rob, is inconveniently still around.

We're setting up the new storylines tonight but, in between, there are the usual bursts of bawdy comic relief, from Stella's heroically rude aunt, back from Tenerife and insulting everyone in Pontyberry, to dipsomaniac undertaker Paula (Elizabeth Berrington). Her husband Dai is more involved in the business now, but needs a lot of training. "Well, of course, they have to be dead first! It won't work otherwise, will it?"

It's a tribute to the strength of Ruth Jones's writing (and the on-screen class of old hands like Elizabeth Berrington and Owen Teale) that Stella - returning tonight for a second series - works as well as it does. In other hands, this relentlessly gentle comedy-drama would be intolerable. But Jones's obvious affection for her characters is counteracted by the occasional mischievous zinger, tonight mostly provided by Stella's Auntie Brenda in the time-honoured role of 'OAP who can say the unsayable'.

As we rejoin Stella in the Welsh valleys, we find her still confused over the identity of her imminent baby's father, and her extended family about to come home to roost. Elsewhere, Berrington and Teale are the pick of a solid supporting cast as Paula and Dai, their bedroom activities now compromised by Dai's new job at the funeral parlour.

Ruth Jones returns as the single mum from Pontyberry in this exceptional comedy drama. Stella's expecting, and unsure who the daddy is - lovely Shaun or her unreliable ex Rob. Meanwhile eldest son Luke has moved back to Canada with Rob to start a new life, and Auntie Brenda is back on a visit from Tenerife with a truckload of her unminced words to dish out to all and sundry. You care about the people, you want to know what happens next, and the acting is superb. Simple, effective storytelling.