Steve Pemberton

A quick chat with... Steve Pemberton (part one)

Steve Pemberton. Steve Pemberton, Steve Pemberton, Steve Pemberton. Where do you start with the man? His acting credits include the acclaimed Happy Valley, Doctor Who and Blackpool. He's written for Whitechapel, appeared in numerous stage hits, like the National's celebrated 2012 production of She Stoops to Conquer, and somehow finds time for everything from radio to the big screen. And, yes. I know. But do we really have to run through his comedy credentials? I mean...

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton on Series 3

"We've done quite a dark series this time around," says Steve Pemberton. "There's two or three episodes where we've pushed the horror element."

From what I can best deduce from the first two episodes of Flowers, writer Will Sharpe is attempting to create some sort of British version of Arrested Development. He's certainly taken elements of the American show most notably a family full of eccentrics led by suicidal children's author Maurice (Julian Barrett) whose family pile is in the middle of the countryside. Maurice is married to Deborah (Olivia Colman) who is constantly trying to put a brave face on things despite having a husband who doesn't love her and two emotionally repressed children. Maurice and Deborah's twins Donald and Amy (Daniel Rigby and Sophia Di Martino) are both in love with their neighbour Abigail (Georgina Campbell) however both don't quite know how to show it. There are also a gaggle of characters surrounding the Flowers family including a sort of manservant played by Sharpe himself and Abigail's awful plastic surgeon father George (Colin Hurley). What Flowers was missing for me was a sort of proxy for the audience to show us how truly awful the family are, similarly to what Jason Bateman did in Arrested Development. But Sharpe failed to create any sort of normal character and therefore I struggled to relate to anything that happened to this catalogue of quirky arty types who didn't seem particularly well-drawn to me. Even the set pieces of the first two episodes, notably Deborah and Maurice's engagement party and the death of Maurice's mother, did little for me as their use of grotesquely-drawn humour has been done better elsewhere most notably in the work of Steve Pemberton and Reese Shearsmith. Despite the fact they were ill-served by a script that thought it was a lot cleverer than it was I felt the cast did well regardless. Olivia Colman did as much as she could with the material she was given and I at least found her character tolerable in small doses. Additionally I felt that Georgina Campbell did well in portraying the only normal character of the bunch in Abigail and I thought if she'd been more prominently placed in these first two episodes I may have watched more. But by the time Maurice's mother had snuffed it at the end of the second episode I felt my time to depart the Flowers family had come as well as they'd struggle to make much of an impression on me over the hour that I'd spent with them. Although there were small flourishes of promise in Sharpe's writing, I felt he over-egged the pudding too much with his characters being too over-the-top to care about and the situations far too outlandish to ever buy into.

The new Julia Davis comedy, Camping, about a group holiday on a camping site, hit the sodden grass running with two episodes that simultaneously amused and (deliciously) horrified.

Steve Pemberton played decent, resigned Robin, who was celebrating his 50th birthday, if "celebrating" is the right word, considering his wife Fiona's (Vicki Pepperdine) attempts at psychological castration via the medium of nagging malevolence (Fiona is the first great television monster of 2016). They and their son, Archie (banned by his mother from eating any foods "that could be vaguely homosexual"), were joined by Jonathan Cake's Adam, a recovering alcoholic, his son (a teenage masturbator), and wrung-out dishcloth of a wife, Kerry (Elizabeth Berrington). We also met recently separated Tom (Rufus Jones), cutting a tragic figure in his Topman finery and attempting to recapture his virility with "dubstep DJ" Fay (Davis), a woman determined to turn pretentious vacuity into an art form.

Camping managed to be wickedly funny while also serving as a compelling argument for losing all faith in humankind. Anyone familiar with Davis's oeuvre (Nighty Night, Hunderby) will know what I mean when I describe the characters as either wildly stressed, intrinsically damaged, irredeemably horrible or all three at once. At one point, Tom was caught in flagrante with Fay in a cubicle in a bric-a-brac shop. "Big apols!" he drawled. Priceless.

Camping review: a gloriously bleak comedy masterpiece

I'm not yet sure that it's quite up there with Nighty Night or Hunderby, but there's no better comedy around at the moment. The only pity is it's on Sky.

TV review: Camping, Sky Atlantic

I have a bit of a confession to make. I was never a big fan of Hunderby. I liked it but was not devoted to it is many were. For some reason - Blackadder excepted - I like my comedy to be wearing modern clothes. So it is feels me with joy that Julia Davis is back in the modern world for Camping.

Camping review

All kinds of awkward. The definition of last night's premiere of Camping on Sky Atlantic. Brought to us by the creator of Nighty Night Julia Davis, her latest offering is squirm-in-your-seat funny.

The latest offering from Julia Davis (Nighty Night) focuses on a holiday under canvas. It's a trip to celebrate the 50th birthday of Robin (Steve Pemberton), who's married to Fiona (Vicki Pepperdine), a woman so assertive she puts the campsite kettle "out of bounds" to maintain tent-life authenticity. But can Fiona's itinerary-making authoritarianism survive the arrival of Tom (Rufus Jones) and his new partner (Davis)? A comedy that's best when it's close to the knuckle, which is most of the time.

This new comedy from Julia Davis is brilliantly slow and agonising. You might cringe as you watch the sour and snappy Fi (Vicki Pepperdine), as with comedies like The Office where you wince at David Brent's lack of social awareness.

Fi is a brittle, neurotic woman, dressed permanently in beige, who refers to her kind and timid husband, Robin (Steve Pemberton), as "stupid idiot." She has organised a camping weekend for Robin's birthday and has planned everything with terrifying precision, so when things start to unravel so does Fi's temper. "This isn't really going to work for me" she seethes on viewing the sleeping arrangements and on hearing new visitors arrive unannounced. Even the use of the campsite kettle infuriates her: "It's for an emergency situation only which we would have to define in the moment!"

So when Tom turns up with his frisky new girlfriend who's clad in leopard-skin, the tension is nearly unbearable. With such rough guests, how can Fi possibly police her son's mealtimes and make sure he doesn't eat anything "vaguely homosexual", like sun-dried tomatoes or baguettes?

Radio Times review

Benidorm is ailing. I speak as one who loved the earlier series but, as the eighth opens, it can barely crank out an ounce of credibility in the storylines, let alone a decent laugh. The Garveys are gone and with them any clout Steve Pemberton, Sheila Reid and Siobhan Finneran brought to the show (although Reid will be back for a guest spot).

A new family, the Dawsons (headed by a shrill Julie Graham), make little impact, while Joyce (Sherrie Hewson) seriously considers hiring the deeply unsavoury Marcus (Robin Askwith).

On a positive note, Jacqueline gives her late hubby Donald a touching send-off, aided by hairdresser Troy (Paul Bazely, returning after four years away).