Sue Johnston

Sue Johnston interview

Former Waking The Dead star Sue Johnston headlines the new three-part comedy Sugartown, which is set in a seaside town famed for its rock-making factory...

Mirroring scenes around the country, the Mancunian clan slump stuffed onto their sofa. As guests arrive, Barbara (Sue Johnston) is doing all the work because Jim (Ricky Tomlinson) is chair-bound after an accident in the precinct. Joanne Froggatt (housemaid Anna from Downton Abbey) plays Anthony's pregnant girlfriend. Surely she won't give birth on Christmas Day?

On the very day the engagement and imminent marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton has been announced, it's only right we celebrate the country's first family. In this special, members of the Royle family share their memories of working on the show, how it came to be, and talk about some of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans. You get the impression that the cast are as close in real life as they are in the show, and Caroline Aherne, Craig Cash, Ricky Tomlinson, Sue Johnston, Liz Smith and Ralf Little share their recollections of a comedy that became a modern classic.

Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash's wonderful observational sitcom about a working-class Manchester family who seem never to leave their sitting room is now going the way Only Fools and Horses did, with an eagerly awaited one-off episode each Christmas. Tonight's instalment, for which no preview discs were available, is deliberately unfestive, with Jim (Ricky Tomlinson) and Barbara (Sue Johnston) wondering whether to spend a cash gift from their children on a satellite HD box or their first trip out of the UK. Afterwards, at 10.00pm, the final series of Gavin & Stacey - a sitcom which owes more than a nod to the Royles - begins to wind down, as the Essex crowd go on an eventful trip to the beach.

The much-loved Royle Family is back for another Christmas special, so reserve your place on the sofa. In The Golden Eggcup, it's the wedding anniversary of Jim and Barbara (Ricky Tomlinson and Sue Johnston) and Antony (Ralf Little) makes a welcome return to the fold. Being a dutiful son - and the only one with a job - he provides the cash so that they can celebrate in style, but the crucial question is what they'll do with the money - blow it on the holiday of a lifetime or a buy a wall-to-wall HD television set. After the glorious, bittersweet episode The Queen of Sheba, The Royle Family has set itself impossibly high standards that combine acute observation and unforced humour with a deep humanity. Essential viewing.

Anyway, "I blame Princess Diana" said Jam & Jerusalem's quintessentially stiff-lipped Caroline (Jennifer Saunders) while talking about the prevailing mood of dreadful wetness and soppiness during last Sunday's excruciating dinner party, which was also attended by Dawn French's lady-who-doesn't, Rosie, and kindly Sal (Sue Johnston), thus turning it into a kind of oestrogen-drenched comedy masterclass, albeit writ rather small and bittersweet, rather as if Jennifer (with co-writer Abigail Wilson) has finally got all that relentless comedy shouting out of her system, and grown up.

Anyway, Caroline was so constipated by her class that she referred to her son, fighting in "the Helmand", as if he was killing time by doing something slightly irksome like pulling up weeds on the drive or putting the rubbish out. Caroline's lip was, obviously, only allowed to tremble when she assumed no one else could see it.

I don't know - perhaps this scene was all the more touching for being aired the day after the announcement of the 200th military death in Afghanistan, but actually I disagree with Caroline; let's not blame Princess Diana for becoming a nation of soppy emotional incontinents; instead let's blame her former sister-in-law, Sarah, Duchess of York instead.

It's the final episode of this oddly brief third series and the ladies of Clatterford are agog - it seems that pensioners' pin-up Charles Dance is definitely going to make an appearance at the Guild. Meanwhile any hopes Sal (Sue Johnston) had for peace and quiet are dashed when Tash's (Sally Phillips) plans to move out hit an obstacle.

In Trevor Griffiths's masterpiece The Comedians an elderly comedian teaches an evening class for aspiring stand-up comics. He makes them close their eyes and think of any personal experience that has affected them deeply. Right, he says. Open your eyes. Tell us what you were thinking - only be funny about it. Contained in that one exercise is the acid test of comedy, and it explains why Jam & Jerusalem has improved out of all recognition. Rather than going for easy laughs, it focuses in large part on the relationships between Sue Johnston's character, the new friend in her life and her two semi-grown-up children. In a gentle Sunday-night way, it is truthful and funny.

Jennifer Saunders's light-hearted WI sitcom is Sunday night whimsy at its best. Tonight's episode has a touch of Miss Marple about it as Sal (Sue Johnston) decides to snoop around the construction site with a camera and notepad in the hope of finding some evidence of wrongdoing. Meanwhile, Caroline (Saunders) plans a dinner party for her husband's London friends. However, things inevitably go awry when she accidentally invites Rosie (Dawn French) and the vicar.

I'm too old for sex scenes, says Sue Johnston

Jam and Jerusalem star Sue Johnston has vowed not to flash her flesh, saying that "no one wants to see wrinklies at it".