Simon Doonan

Beautiful People traces the life and times of an outrageous, unashamed teenage fashionista - played with great charm by Luke Ward-Wilkinson - growing up in Reading in the 1990s. His father is a plumber; his mother is a drinkers and his blind Aunty Hayley is as mad a March hare.

As an adolescent, the young man feeds off Tennessee Williams' films, dresses up in women's clothes and dreams of a glamorous world elsewhere. It is not a work of comic genius and - unlike the first series of Shameless - it doesn't give off the smell of authenticity, despite being based on the memoirs of Simon Doonan, creative director of Barney's department store in New York. But it does have an exuberant cast of characters, crazy fantasy sequences and plenty of good humour.

David Chater, The Times, 2nd October 2008

The beige boredom of suburban adolescence has produced a stream of anti-heroes. Now, to add to the notable likes of Holden Caulfield, Malcolm (in the middle) and Adrian Mole, we have Simon Doonan, self-styled star of Beautiful People and survivor of growing up in Reading. Which takes some doing for a teenage boy into frocks.

Gay-friendly would be putting it a tad mildly for Jonathan Harvey's boisterous sitcom-style adaptation of Doonan's original memoir. It's gay-delirious, spinning off in camp tangents - including a hilarious spoof on those crazy old Egoiste ads - at the drop of an escapist hat. Not all the jokes hit the mark, but its feel for the early 1990s, those dark pre-internet days, is spot on.

Told from the perspective of Doonan's present-day persona, a slightly fey New York window-dresser played by Luke Ward-Wilkinson, Beautiful People sidesteps soft nostalgia and skewers the past with waspish wit. Clutch it to your man boobs.

Keith Watson, Metro, 2nd October 2008