Steve Coogan

Sunshine is a very frustrating drama to watch. There are moments when it threatens to be consumed by a sense of overarching pathos and a need to be gritty and northern yet always lovable. But within the on-going story of bad lad with a heart (and a huge gambling problem) Bing and his attempts to do right by his young family, there is a lot to like. Steve Coogan as Bing is the draw, displaying a talent for underplayed drama that is usually lost beneath his penchant for constant improvising. Here, however, he is magic. And when he's acting alongside an old pro like Bernard Hill as Bing's dad, you appreciate just how good he is.

Sunshine was a feel-good north country drama co-written by Craig Cash. It was The Royle Family drenched in syrup, but with a feel-bad central character. This was an uneasy mixture. Steve Coogan was Bing, a father with a gambling habit who gets stitched up in an illegal gambling club, having blown his partner's holiday savings in an attempt to pay back the mortgage arrears. Playing the part with a convincing mixture of bumptious charm and desperate vulnerability, Coogan is a pretty good character actor if you can ever forget that this is Steve Coogan. By the end I had just about managed it.

Sunshine is a comedy drama drawn from the same Northern roots as Early Doors. Filled with gentle humour, lovable characters and laugh-out-loud jokes, it should have been easy to warm to Sunshine. But the clouds kept rolling in.

It depended on whether Bing, a happy-go-lucky gambler, came across as one of life's charmers or a bit of an idiot. Unfortunately, Steve Coogan's cartoonish mugging meant Bing see-sawed between the two, shredding our sympathy every time he'd won it back; you wanted to put an end to the showboating. Still, Sunshine's pleasures are worth sticking with to see, now Bing's lost the lot, whether it turns out fine again.

Steve Coogan plays a character - called Bing Crosby - who spends half the time goofing around like a poor man's Alan Partridge; the other half living up to his wife's declaration that he's a selfish bastard. Should we laugh at his exuberance? Should we feel for him, being lad astray by his jolly mates? Should we hate him for being a selfish compulsive gambler ? In the end, we decided we'd simply rather avoid him.

This is the latest series from Craig Cash and Phil Mealey, who wrote BBC2's quietly brilliant Early Doors. Cash also co-wrote (and played Dave in) The Royle Family, so there's pedigree here. You'd expect wry Mancunian wit and warm character comedy - and that's exactly what you get.

The story centres on Steve Coogan as Bing, a lovable but hopeless chancer given to joking his way out of trouble. He leads not so much a hand-to-mouth existence as hand-to-bookies, and so spends much of the time in the doghouse with girlfriend Bernadette (beautifully played by Lisa Millett). There's quality support from Bernard Hill as Bing's dad, whose idea of babysitting is to wake his grandson up for an evening of tall stories about how he gave Hitler a Chinese burn. And Cash and Mealey turn up as bin-men. It's gently amusing, with a loving attention to detail, but don't expect belly laughs - it's classed as a comedy drama.

Sunshine is wonderful stuff. This particular type of sunshine, written by Craig Cash and Phil Mealey (the team behind Early Doors and The Royle Family: Queen of Sheba), tells the story of three generations of a family from the 1970s. Steve Coogan plays a likeable young man who married his childhood sweetheart; he is funny, cheerful and optimistic, someone capable - according to Grandad (Bernard Hill) - of charming the nuts off a squirrel. Sadly he is also a compulsive gambler who squanders what little money the family has and risks losing everything that matters to him. Sunshine doesn't have the fly-on-the-wall naturalism of The Royle Family, but it does share its warmth and its humanity.

Steve Coogan plays what's probably his straightest telly role to date in excellent new comedy-drama series Sunshine.

His character, Manchester binman Bob 'Bing' Crosby, is a chirpy, happy-go-lucky soul who has one potentially fatal flaw - namely, his fondness for a bit of a flutter. But what starts off as a harmless habit has developed into something a whole lot scarier by the end of episode one (which, admittedly, spans several years) - and threatens to rip his family apart.

Steve Coogan takes the lead in a gentle but affecting comedy-drama about addiction. Scripted expertly by Craig Cash and Phil Mealey, it's the story of Bob 'Bing' Crosby, a man who loves a flutter.

As you'd expect from Cash, the setting is resolutely northern and ordinary, and the focus is on Bing's family - the young son who narrates the action, the long-suffering childhood sweetheart, the dad with a part to play in how Bing turned out.

Compared with the usual stuff of prime-time slots, Sunshine requires emotional investmnet. In the course of three episodes, this should be richly rewarded.

London Paper Review

Sunshine is a sitcom, but it's not funny. Except it is, apart from when it's serious - and then it's not. It stars Steve Coogan as a lovable everyday dad, except he's utterly - annoying, and not like anyone you've ever met.

Craig Cash and Phil Mealey script this bittersweet comedy drama about 'Bing' Crosby, a lovable loser with a destructive streak of gambling addiction that keeps him never too far away from the bookie's counter. It has that essential northern grit to it that you'd expect from the writers of Early Doors and The Royle Family, and Steve Coogan is great as Bing, giving the character a more paired down reality than grotesques like Alan Partridge and Tommy Saxondale. Cash and Mealey pop in as comedy bin men, but the real honours here go to the exceptional Bernard Hill as Bing's dad. A highly promising start.