Sally Phillips

A brand new game for Friday nights: spot Joanna Lumley. She's absolutely unrecognisable as a bonkers bicycling pensioner in Jennifer Saunders' gentle rural comedy set in Clatterford in Devon - one of those imaginary villages where you can't step out of your cottage without tripping over a dozen or so gurning eccentrics.

But what this lacks in laughs it makes up for in star names. As well as Saunders playing a rich, horsey, friend of Madonna-type, there's Pauline McLynn from Father Ted, Sally Phillips from Smack The Pony, Maggie Steed as the leader of the Women's Guild, a bubble-permed Dawn French as the village idiot, and David Mitchell of That Mitchell And Webb Look.

The piece was actually written for Sue Johnston who plays Sal Vine, the practice nurse whose doctor husband rather thoughtlessly keels over and dies.

Perhaps because of the huge cast, and the way slapstick comedy runs alongside sadness, this first episode feels like a patchwork quilt knocked up from leftover wool.

But some scenes, such as when Sal is visited by a hopeless grief counsellor (the brilliant Rosie Cavaliero) suggest it might be worth giving it a chance to find its feet.

Jane Simon, The Mirror, 24th November 2006

In a week in which Dawn French began her so far failed attempt to show that her comedic skills can embrace radio as well as TV, Sally Phillips' turn as the social worker who is just not a people person edged ever closer to classic comedy monster status.

Chris Campling, The Times, 4th November 2005

Radio 4 on Friday: "Current thinking in social work is that one shouldn't tell the child they're bad, one should say the act was bad." No, not a worthy documentary but the wonderful Clare in the Community. Two episodes in, it's clear that, with this adaptation of Harry Venning's Guardian cartoon about a social worker, Radio 4's found a really funny sitcom. Sally Phillips delivers Clare's PC pronouncements perfectly deadpan, making them all the more entertaining. Who'd have thought Clare would sound so cut-glass? She does, and it's now impossible to imagine her any other way. Hurrah - there are four episodes still to come.

Camilla Redmond, The Guardian, 6th December 2004