Sarah Solemani

The second in the series of Comedy Showcase pilots, Coma Girl isn't the strongest of shows - and I can't see it getting a full series.

The girl in question, Lucy (Anna Crilly, who starred in last week's Comedy Lab pilot Anna & Katy), is trapped in a coma full of surreal moments - like seemingly being at a party and a pier, which made very little sense.

The main goings on was with the people who were coming to see her, especially three school friends: Siobhan (Sarah Solemani), a TV presenter who has recently got fired from her job, Pip (Katherine Parkinson), a bohemian woman, and Sarah (Katy Wix from Anna & Katy), a mother of three. There is also Lucy's mother Mrs. Kay (Julia Deakin) who is constantly taking photos in the hope of building up evidence so she can sue someone on her daughter's behalf.

For me the show was slow going. There was the odd good moment (Pip giving the comatose Lucy a copy of last week's Heat magazine to read), but I think the problem is that this show would probably work better as a comedy drama rather than a sitcom. The idea of a comedy about someone in a coma isn't a new idea (see the radio sitcom Vent) so it can work, but it wasn't presented too well in this format.

There's another issue I have with the show...the theme tune. If you have a show about a woman in a coma, surely "Girlfriend in a Coma" by The Smiths would be the ideal tune to play?

Unlike last week's Chickens, there wouldn't seem to be a whole lot of mileage in tonight's Comedy Showcase pilot.

Coma Girl is, not surprisingly, about a girl in a coma who - just like Stella in this week's Corrie - has also been hit by a car and now lies in a hospital bed.

While she's under she's visited by three old school friends as well as her mum.

From her mother's get-up, she might also turn out to be a time traveller from the 1950s, but the more likely explanation is that hair and wardrobe were just having a bit of an off day.

The friends are very well played by Katy Wix, Sarah Solemani, and Katherine Parkinson, while Anna Crilly - best known as the fabulous Magda in Lead Balloon - has the rather thankless task of playing the unfortunate patient Lucy, who's trapped in an Ashes To Ashes-style dream world.

It's pleasant enough but unless Coma Girl wakes up, or develops a much more interesting dream-life, it might be kinder to take this one off life support.

First shown on BBC Three last autumn, this sitcom gets its first terrestrial airing. It's based in the bedsit of unemployed twentysomething couple Steve (Being Human's excellent Russell Tovey) and Becky (comedian Sarah Solemani) as the pair laze around in bed, drinking, eating, having sex and bickering. It's low-key, slightly grubby and observational in the vein of The Royle Family.

The best British comedy right now is Him & Her, which couldn't be more different from US sitcom Modern Family. You imagine the latter being devised in the classic American way, with a team of crack writers being locked in a room, fed pizzas pushed under the door and only let out once they'd delivered scripts as tight as Gloria the Colombian trophy-wife's dresses.

Him & Her, on the other hand, looks like it's come out of the BBC3 glooper which produces programmes for feckless twentysomethings who don't actually watch TV. But while its central characters are two feckless twentysomethings who for five episodes now have not left their mingin' cowp of a flat (tomorrow's the last one and I don't expect the situation to change), Stefan Golaszewski's romcom is, in these surroundings, a jam and fluff-covered gem featuring charming performances from Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani as Steve and Becky.

Despite their differences, Him & Her and Modern Family had things in common last week beyond their quality. In both, a character brought a girl home, prompting consternation. Parents fussed over daughters and Steve proved just as useless as Mitchell with a hammer in his hand. He was meeting Becky's parents for the first time. "I'm a people person," he said afterwards. "No you're not," said Becks, shutting the door on the world again.

While most of the noise has been about a patchy series of The Inbetweeners, Him & Her has wormed its way into tvBite's heart. The two leads, Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani are absolutely superb. Genuinely excellent, well worth catching on iPlayer while you can.

Week three of this likeable comedy and it's still debatable whether Steve and Becky's reluctance to leave the squalor of their rank one-bed flat is actually a lifestyle choice or merely reflects BBC3's penny-pinching love affair with sitcoms that can be shot on a single set (Ideal, The Smoking Room, etc).

This week our grubby, loved-up slackers (perfectly matched Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani) are getting ready to go to a fancy-dress party where you have to go as something beginning with P.

But there are so many more things they'd rather be doing instead - like squeezing their spots, discussing Candle In The Wind at length and sharing the secrets of the Fringe Wash.

For the full interactive experience, best watch this in bed, eating buttered toast.

I was going to review the first episode of this new comedy last week, but received the wrong DVD, so my panegyric has had to wait: it's beautifully acted (especially by Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani in the lead roles), wonderfully written (by Stefan Golaszewski), and intermittently very funny indeed. Last night, Steve refused to go to the pub to celebrate his 24th birthday, citing a nasty dose of flu when in fact he just wanted to stay at home watching porn. That was pretty much all that happened, but it happened exquisitely.

It's tempting for critics to look for the antecedents of new comedy, which is probably very annoying for those who conceive and write it. But here goes anyway. Him & Her seems to owe something to The Royle Family, in that, within the most mundane domestic setting, it gets its laughs from character rather than situation, powered of course by a terrific script. Also in common with the Royles, Steve and Becky are themselves telly addicts, working their way through the Morse box set. Those little references by television to television can sometimes look glib and self-conscious, but here they work perfectly, and last night Morse came in handy in all kinds of ways, not least as a device to have Steve caught by Becky and their friends as he vigorously played with himself. It was enough to shake the ghost of John Thaw, but only with huge guffaws of laughter.

Review of Him and Her

Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani waste their time and ours in another smut-fest from BBC Three's "Comedy" department.

Last week it was Steve (Russell Tovey) who was keen to cop off with girlfriend Becky (Sarah Solemani). This time Becky's happy to return the favour. "Shall we do more sex, then?" she asks; it is his birthday, after all. But Steve's playing a sickie - even visits from mum Janet, who has a typically prickly relationship with Becky, and an unlikely bevy of acquaintances fail to get him off the bed - and has something else in mind that he can enjoy all on his own...

All this leads up to a final grubby but funny gag that neatly ties up several disparate elements, and which writer Stefan Golaszewski must have enjoyed putting together. What do a Morse DVD, an inflatable armchair, handcream and headphones have in common?