Simon Doonan

Based on a memoir by Simon Doonan, the creative director of Barneys department store, the second series of this camp and sweary sitcom comes to an end next week. Tonight Simon (Luke Ward-Wilkinson) recounts the story behind how he won the Turner Prize. The X Factor's Dannii Minogue turns up in a sprightly comic turn and there are some lovely jokes throughout, some of which err on the far side of strict decency. Olivia Colman and Aidan McArdle play Simon's parents.

The glitzy comedy series based on Simon Doonan's book of the same name is proving a jolly affair. (For those who missed the previous episodes, the sitcom recounts New York-based designer Doonan's teenage memories of growing up in Reading.) Tonight's third episode hinges on the young Simon's (Luke Ward-Wilkinson) desire for a water feature at home.

If The Office made Slough look dismal then Beautiful People makes suburban Reading look similarly gloomy, especially from the viewpoint of an effeminate 13-year-old schoolboy desperate for the glitz, glamour and excitement of London. Written by Jonathan Harvey (Gimme Gimme Gimme) and based upon the childhood memoirs of Simon Doonan, creative director of Barney's department store in New York, the camp comedy drama is back for a second six-part series. Using flashbacks, narration and fantasy sequences, each episode centres upon how Simon (played by Luke Ward-Wilkinson and, in his older years, Samuel Barnett) came to own some of his most treasured possessions. In this first episode Simon recalls a school genealogy project that led him to find out that his parents never actually married.

Winner of the Best Comedy Award at the Banff TV Festival (no, me neither) this sitcom is an acquired taste - a cocktail of Advocaat and helium. Simon Doonan's memoirs of Reading ("Reading: You're Welcome To It," as the road sign puts it), the start of series two finds its caricature of family life still slapping on comedy with a spangly trowel.

Surprisingly, it's written by Jonathan Harvey who penned Gimme Gimme Gimme and creates some of the funniest scripts on Corrie. In one interview he said he originally thought that writing for the soap would be beneath him. If he thought Corrie was beneath him, he must have needed a diving bell to sink to the comedic depths of Beautiful People.

The cast - including Olivia Colman and Aidan McArdle as Simon's parents - gamely give it their best shot tonight as Simon discovers that, gasp, they're not married.

Beautiful People Review

Review from America: Why aren't more people talking about Beautiful People? The BBC series about Barney's creative director Simon Doonan's childhood (updated from the '60s to the '90s) is the kind of deliriously whacked-out comedy that should inspire a cult following-especially since it's produced by one of the men behind Absolutely Fabulous.

In Simon Doonan's autobiography Beautiful People, he escaped from just such a drab English environment. Camp and outrageous, he grew up in dull old Reading in the 1950s with his entertainingly dysfunctional family, but he longed to be with the glamorous folk. Getting his wish, he ended up in Manhattan as not only the world's most celebrated window dresser, but also a witty reporter of the fashion scene.

This dramatisation had a lot going for it. It looked lovely and had some fine comic actors. In the attempt to make it relevant to our times, however, its 1950s setting, its characters and even the plotlines were changed. His batty aunt became inexplicably non-white, for example.

Do telly folk think we have no imagination or interest in other eras? Details are everything in a joke and none of these rang true. That is why it was jolly throughout, but never actually funny.

As cheekily camp as Simon Doonan's recollections of his barmy family are, Jonathan Harvey's innocent adaptation looks oddly as though it should be broadcast in the middle of the afternoon.

The 13-year-old Doonan is gleefully played by Luke Ward-Wilkinson, who introduces us to his dipsomaniacal mum Debbie (Peep Show's Olivia Colman) and his camp best friend Kyle (Layton Williams).

But then that, perhaps, is the best achievement of this likeable, if light, comedy drama: it manages to make the adventures of a tender, cross-dressing teenager look like normal children's TV.

Jonathan Harvey made his name with Beautiful Thing, a play about growing up gay in unsympathetic working-class suburbia. Now he has written Beautiful People, a sitcom that follows suit, loosely based on the memoirs of the top Manhattan window-dresser Simon Doonan. This doesn't sound like much of an advance, and watching the first episode I had the sense of a talent in full retreat: a randy neighbour tries to tempt Simon's plumber dad round - It's right draughty round my gash. I mean, gaff. It is peopled with what are clearly intended to be lovable originals, but no lovability came over, and precious little originality. It's all rather ugly.

This new comedy from Jonathan Harvey (Gimme, Gimme, Gimme) is adapted from the novel by Simon Doonan (now creative director of New York's famous store Barneys), based on his childhood.

The enjoyably cheeky series, starring Luke Ward-Wilkinson and Samuel Barnett (who play the young and old Simon), explores Simon's recollections of his teenage life in Reading.

In case you don't know (and unless you spotted him offering style tips on America's Next Top Model - why should you?) Simon Doonan is the British-born window-dresser and creative director of the glamorous New York department store, Barneys. This new sitcom is inspired by his autobiography about growing up gay and working class in un-glamorous Reading.

Not having read it, I can't tell you how faithfully Jonathan Harvey's screenplay is to the book, but as Doonan is now in his mid-50s, it's a safe bet he wasn't a schoolboy in 1997 as he's depicted here (although his household did include a live-in blind auntie, played by Meera Syal).

Luke Ward-Wilkinson and Samuel Barnett play Simon, then and now, in the first instalment which works its socks off trying to be wacky. Describing his mum's attempts to entertain, Simon now tells us: Never, ever trust the word 'zany'. Advice the director might have done well to heed.