Sarah Hadland

Births, Deaths and Marriages is a new sitcom written by and starring David Schneider as Malcolm Fox, a by-the-book and seemingly dull registrar.

The registry office has recently taken on a new manager from the local car parking department called Lorna (Sarah Hadland), who has some odd ideas on increasing profit, such as converting the stationary cupboard into a reception room, organising weddings at theme parks, and limiting other weddings to ten minutes in length.

There are some strong moments in Births, Deaths and Marriages. For example, Malcolm having to officiate a wedding taking place on a roller coast, despite his crippling vertigo - and Schneider can certainly perform well - but I'm unsure about the quality of material.

I can't help but think that the wedding vows are there purely to take up space on the script. Also, the show follows the gag about disabled people not having a leg to stand on. A bit old hat, don't you think?

New comedy, by and starring David Schneider, set in that crossroad of British experience, the registry office. Schneider plays Malcolm, a Chief Registrar of the old school, stickler for rules and regulations, unmarried. Sent in to work beside him and bring the office up to date is Lorna (Sarah Hadland). She's a divorcee with bright ideas, like how to make weddings make profits. How far she'll get with the workforce, spiky Mary (Sally Bretton), geeky Luke (Russell Tovey) and dizzy but sympathetic Anita (Sandy McDade) is anyone's guess.

Sarah Hadland: I watch The Killing all night

Sarah Hadland made it big in Miranda and is now starring in The Bleak Old Shop Of Stuff - here she tells Metro about her favourite TV programmes, from Damages to The Killing.

Behind those stick-on whiskers, Robert Webb's innocent, ­dim-witted face has got "gullible sucker" written all over it.

And, as the Dickensian spoof returns, Bleak Old Shop proprietor Jedrington Secret-Past and his family are about to be catapulted into a world of untold wealth thanks to a business opportunity that sounds almost too good to be true.

While last year's Christmas special was full of lots of soft, wordy humour that showed off its radio roots, the first of this ­new BBC2 three-parter takes a more ­straightforward route to the viewers' funny bone.

And if you don't laugh at The Apprentice and Tesco gags then there's really ­something wrong with you. Katherine Parkinson is wonderful as Jedrington's wife Conceptiva, who is being taunted (Lady Dedlock-style) about her very own secret past.

Her insistence on doing everything without any help from her new servants is a lovely detail, while Waterloo Road's Sarah Hadland pops up, quite literally tonight, as a very different kind of teacher to what we've seen before.

This sitcom may represent the height of ­silliness, but it's also very clever.

Sarah Hadland interview

CultBox caught up with actress Sarah Hadland, who plays Miranda's best friend Stevie, to find out more about the show...

Happy Tuesdays: Mr and Mrs Smith

I listened to Will Smith's Mr and Mrs Smith the other day - part of the Happy Tuesdays season of pilots on Radio 4. It was a show about a married couple undergoing counselling, and starred Will Smith and Sarah Hadland. I rather liked it. In fact, I like it a lot.

For several years Miranda Hart has been cheerfully stealing scenes from under the noses of her more illustrious co-stars, so it was only a matter of time before TV producers rewarded her with a comedy series of her own.

Episode one of Miranda would appear to justify their faith. It has a genuine sense of fun, a distinct style, several very sharp lines and some cleverly constructed set-pieces. But, God, it was manic. In the words of Michael Winner in that memorably atrocious insurance advert: "Calm down, dear."

Hart, who also wrote the script, works very hard for her laughs, but an occasional change of pace would have been very welcome. It might also have afforded a little breathing space for some character development, which was in seriously short supply. A disproportionate amount of the jokes were predicated on Hart's size, which, personally, I don't find particularly disproportionate.

When not addressing the camera, Hart is busy bantering with joke shop co-owner Stevie (Sarah Hadland), being socially inept and lusting after hunky chef Gary (Tom Ellis) who, in an interesting reversal of traditional sitcom gender objectifying, is underwritten to the point of non-existence. Hart is much more generous towards her female co-stars, providing Patricia Hodge and Sally Phillips with the opportunity to do some scene-stealing of their own as neurotic mother and bitchy best friend respectively.

New sitcom Miranda is the first television series from stand-up comedian Miranda Hart. It's set in Miranda's joke shop, run by Stevie (Sarah Hadland), as Miranda has no business acumen herself. The show has a semi-autobiographical style as she struggles with her boarding-school background, body shape and a mother who's keen to get her married off.

Although very much a traditional sitcom, the show entertains due to Miranda's wit and large helpings of silliness. It also breaks the fourth wall by having Miranda talk directly to the audience in her asides to camera; this is hard to pull off, but it works well.

I warmed to the show because of Miranda's charm and I'd spend more time with her - but please, oh please, don't make me marry her.

Kids can learn to love history just so long as it's told to them in a way that brings it to life. And this new series, based on the colourful books by Terry Deary and Martin Brown, does precisely that, with Sarah Hadland, Steve Punt and Meera Syal among the cast re-enacting some gory ancient tales.