Steve Pemberton

Sue Perkins has become one of the faces of BBC Two in recent years, presenting all maner of food and pop-historical programming. Now she returns to her comic roots in this self-written sitcom, starring as Sara, a successful female vet about to turn 40 - but still frightened to tell her parents (Jeff Rawle and Harriet Walter) that she's gay. Her motley gang of friends set an ultimatum: if Sara fails to reveal her sexuality within six weeks, they will. To make matters even more chaotic, they arrange for her to attend a series of sessions with an eccentric life coach.

In her acting debut, Perkins is likeably beleaguered and sardonic, while there's a strong supporting cast of Nicola Walker (Spooks, Last Tango in Halifax), Dominic Coleman (Miranda), Shelley Conn (Mistresses) and Joanna Scanlan (The Thick of It, Getting On) - not to mention lots of four-legged extras. Guest stars also pop up throughout the six-part run, including June Brown, Steve Pemberton, Mark Heap, Dawn French and Perkins's Great British Bake Off co-host and original comedy partner Mel Giedroyc[/o]. Pitched somewhere between the slapstick Miranda and the sardonic Grandma's House, it's a highly promising, enjoyably daft opener.

The best comedy of the week was to be found over on CBBC, where series four of Horrible Histories made its debut (confusingly, BBC1 is currently showing series two).

Based on the cheerfully bloodthirsty books by Terry Deary and Martin Brown, it plays a bit like Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time, if you replaced the visiting professor of history from Queen's College, Oxford, with a talking rat making jokes about wee.

There have been plenty of bloody revolutions featured in Horrible Histories, but the team's most recent coup was to reunite The League of Gentlemen for the first time in a bronze age. Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith turned up as craven Hollywood execs keen to panel-beat the messy lives of historical figures into award-bait biopics, and while Gatiss's American accent was pretty duff, the bickering spark between the three gentlemen remained.

Recruiting the league should not distract from the tireless efforts of the core cast, particularly Jim Howick, who has matured from being an off-model David Mitchell into a gifted comic actor in his own right. But ultimately, the highlight of this first salvo of new shows was a prancing Charles Darwin explaining the ch-ch-changes of evolutionary theory via an exquisite David Bowie pastiche. Horribly good.

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Interesting fact: in the late 1630s, as part of the war effort against the Scots, womens' urine was collected from church congregations for use in the production of gunpowder. This is grist to the mill for Horrible Histories, back on CBBC for a fourth series. And isn't that Steve Pemberton, Mark Gatiss and Reece Shearsmith, AKA The League Of Gentlemen, joining in the fun? Which just goes to show how much credibility HH enjoys these days.

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Find out why Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton and Mark Gatiss are working together on the popular kids show.

From start (By the Sleepy Lagoon drifts over Jan and Mick as they discuss toes) to finish (Con te partirò swells over a jubilant pool party), this episode is an unbridled joy. The second penned by Steve Pemberton, it subtly gets under the skin of the broad characters.

Madge turns cougar with her young "Muslamic" catch Mohammed, Gavin is trapped with Noreen, Sam gets off with the most unlikely bloke, and Trudy (too old) and Michael (too young) try to crash an 18-30 booze cruise.

Plus, Siobhan Redmond guest-stars as the coach of an Olympic swimming team. Think an ultra-brusque Miss Jean Brodie and you'll be halfway there.

One of the finest episodes of this series to date, scripted by Steve Pemberton. Led by a fearsome martinet of a coach, members of the British Olympic synchronised swimming team turn up at the hotel, with a fawning Joyce prepared to eject guests from the pool to accommodate them. Elegant they may be but, as Tim Healy's down-to-earth transvestite has it, they're "thrashing about like a bag of cats in a canal" beneath the surface. While it's not exactly Pinter, it's ITV fun at its best.

Steve Pemberton reveals his darkest secret

Benidorm star Steve Pemberton has told how he keeps three severed heads as surreal souvenirs.