Sue Johnston

Sky Living comedy Gates gets the American treatment

Show that starred Joanna Page, Tom Ellis and Sue Johnston in the UK is to be re-imagined on NBC across the pond.

We arrive at the Gates, Sky Living's new sitcom about the parents and staff of a congenial city primary, and the 15-minute social minefield they're forced to navigate at the beginning and end of each school day. Gates had the potential to be a new Outnumbered, with its harried middle-class parents, and its ensemble's impeccable comedy pedigree: Sue Johnston (The Royle Family); Joanna Page (Gavin & Stacey); Tony Gardner (Lead Balloon; Fresh Meat).

In the first episode, builder and new parent Mark (Tom Ellis, him off Miranda) was cornered on the school run by two terrifying mums: a militantly mustard-keen Aussie who organises coffee mornings and salsa-cise evenings, and an uncomfortably tactile art therapist. The teacher (Johnston) is perpetually hung- over. The headmaster is barely out of short trousers himself, and eager to please Ofsted with his "School and Home Partnership Workshop Week" (aka Parents' Week). The only sane people in the school are the pupils.

I laughed out loud once - at the headmaster's bowing and scraping before a bemused Ofsted inspector - and smiled once or twice more. Gates hasn't quite decided whether it's a realist cringe comedy, or a semi-surrealist one. A lot of sitcom pilots disappoint, but they can improve with age. The second series of both the BBC's Episodes and Grandma's House, for example, have been received far more warmly than their first. Gates is still only half an idea, middlingly executed, but given time it might settle into something more watchable. Outnumbered, though, it ain't.

Yet another school-based sitcom, but this time the parents (Joanna Page and Tom Ellis) are the butt of the jokes. On the first day of school they're much more nervous than their daughter, knowing they must run the gauntlet of the school gates where predators prowl eager to ensnare them in endless coffee mornings, after-school activities and play-dates.

Before you can say "How do you do?" the new dad is fleeing from a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Aussie and a lonely housewife. Best of all is Sue Johnston as a hungover teacher who couldn't care less about the headmaster's harebrained schemes. Survivors of the school run will soon be chuckling in sympathy.

Gavin & Stacey's Joanna Page, Sue Johnston and Tom Ellis (better known as Miranda's love interest) star in a new comedy about the parents who meet daily to pick their kids up from school. Helen (Page) and Mark (Ellis) enrol their daughter in her new primary school, where they encounter the minefield of parental etiquette, volunteering for the PTA and school-gate flirtations. Support from Catherine Shepherd, Ella Kenion and Tony Gardner. Promises good things.

A promising start for a new comedy set around the daily drop-off and pick-up point at a primary school - a minefield of social politics. Mark (Tom Ellis) and Helen (Gavin & Stacey star Joanna Page) and their daughter Chloe (Mari Ann Bull) are new to the area and Helen warns Mark not to get involved with the other parents; "these gates are a jungle," she warns. But an unexperienced Mark proves defenceless as he is lured into hosting a post-school party and giving a presentation to the pupils. Sue Johnston shines as a swinging, single older teacher.

Sue Johnston lands Coronation Street role

Royle Family star Sue Johnston is to play Stella Price's mum Gloria in Coronation Street, producers have said.

The traditional redemptive sugar substitute is provided by the "heart-warming" (your critical alarm bells should now be ringing) tale of a Birkenhead family holidaying in Lapland. Sue Johnston and Julie Graham star, and Zawe Ashton - so wonderful as Vod in Channel 4's student comedy drama Fresh Meat - plays the tour rep known as "Jingle Jill".

Olivier Award-winning playwright Michael Wynne turns his hand to TV comedy tonight, with this one-off special about a close-knit Birkenhead family who decide to pull out the stops and go to Lapland for Christmas. It stars the excellent Sue Johnston - best known as Barbara Royle from The Royle Family - as the family's benevolent matriarch, Eileen; with support from a strong ensemble cast, including Elizabeth Berrington (Waterloo Road) as her overstressed daughter Paula and Stephen Graham (This Is England) as her long-suffering son Pete. Being a British comedy, it doesn't take long for the infighting to start, and the film contains a handful of smartly observed scenes that will be familiar to many viewers - from the grandmother being used as a permanently on-call nanny by her own children, to the simmering family grievances vented after a few glasses of sherry, to the difficulty of keeping older siblings from spoiling the magic of Father Christmas for their younger brothers and sisters. At points, this takes the programme more into the realm of edgy, Shameless-style drama than gentle festive comedy; but Wynne manages to sugar the pill with a good deal of warm Northern humour.

Sue Johnston: 'Reindeer tastes like filet steak!'

Sue Johnston talks about her new Christmas comedy Lapland and what it's like playing This is England star Stephen Graham's mum...