Sue Perkins

Three weeks in and partially closeted lesbian vet Sara (Sue Perkins) isn't making much progress towards the grand parental coming-out inked in for week six. But forget the daft story and relish instead the comedy cameos that light up Sara's world. Tonight Raquel Cassidy puts in a delicious performance as Sabine, Sara's French-speaking ex. Sabine accuses Sara of being emotionally cold, leading to a frank exchange of views that gives us a snatch of cinéma noir-et-blanc.

Sara's very loud, very angry French ex turns up uninvited and colonises the living room where she melodramatically writhes around on the floor. It's a madly over-the-top, heavily accented turn from the estimable Raquel Cassidy (Jack Dee's long-suffering wife in Lead Balloon).

Meanwhile, Sara (Sue Perkins, also the writer) tries to pluck up the courage to ask out the lovely Eve (Shelley Conn). It's fun and sweet-natured and there's great support from Nicola Walker and Dominic Coleman as Sara's friends, dim Justine and precious Jamie.

It's the midpoint of this endearing sex comedy, and romantically inhibited vet Sara (Sue Perkins) still hasn't nerved herself to ask beautiful dog-owner Eve (Shelley Conn) out - and Eve's labrador has finally run out of ailments for her to treat. Even worse, Sara's French ex, Sabine (Raquel Cassidy) has turned up, and is making extremely Gallic scenes (filmed by director Natalie Bailey in moody monochrome). Don't miss Perkins's rendering of the words "susceptibilité puerile!"

Sue Perkins's almost-out gay vet Sara visits chucklesome life coach Toria (The Thick Of It's Joanna Scanlan) in a bid to ease her transition towards revealing all to her parents. She's also busy acting as pet-based marriage counsellor to trophy wife type Julia (Amy Huberman), who is seeking custody of her hound Rufus. Meanwhile, for some vaguely explained reason, she finds herself playing paintball and meeting a Dutch movie star. In summary, the surreal moments are jarring, the narrative is a mess, and then it just ends.

Sue Perkins's gentle comic persona keeps this new sitcom about a slightly useless vet ticking over. Sara (Perkins) is a lesbian who has yet to come out to her parents, but is being chatted up by one of her clients. Tonight she tries to help a woman retain her dog during a messy divorce, and there's an amusing scene when she visits Toria, her life coach - played by the endlessly funny Joanna Scanlan from The Thick of It and Getting On.

New to BBC Two, Sue Perkins stars in a new sitcom about a lesbian vet - although she herself has described it as not being a "gay sitcom".

Perkins plays Sara, who in the opening episode celebrates her 40th birthday. However, she has one major problem coming up: she's never told her parents that she's gay, making up bizarre-sounding boyfriends like a Frenchman who sells false legs. To make things worse, they're coming up to see her in a few weeks. As a result, for her birthday her parents decide to hire Sara a rather unorthodox (and to Sara an annoying) lifestyle coach called Toria (Joanna Scanlan), to give her the courage to finally come out. If Sara fails to do so, Toria's under instructions to tell Sara's parents herself.

This opening episode was very good. The first scene, in which Sara deals with a cat called Mosley owned by someone who seems to be keen on alternative therapies (Ella Kenion), is great. It gets better when she starts to put the cat down, only for the owner to change her mind half-way through. This leads to an even better scene starring Mark Heap as the undertaker at a pet crematorium, in a typically bonkers role that we are used to seeing him in. The laughs keep coming.

Much of the better comic moments are slightly skewed. It's not off-the-wall surrealism, it's just slightly odd, but in this case odd works well. Whether it's a scene involving a netball team doing a haka or the idea of a restaurant which tells you the name of the cow you are eating, it all seems to be working well.

And Sue's right - the fact the lead character's gay appears to be something just in the background. This series has potential, but the big test is still to come.

Review: Heading Out - Pets, eh? They're enough to drink

Fortunately, Sue Perkins, she of the endless witty one-liners on The Great British Bake Off, not only stars as Sara, but also writes, which elevates Heading Out to watchable status. OK, it isn't about to blow anyone's mind, but it's blessed with beautifully written, unexpected lines and Perkins's ability to be droll and vulnerable at the same time.

Sue Perkins has almost qualified for that most exclusive of private members' clubs, The Uncriticisables, with her turns on those state-of-nation cookery shows that I don't watch. Heading Out, though, is the sort of thing that could get her ­suspended or - any more of that lesbian netball - banned.

Nothing against lesbian netball, you understand, but the silly scene down at the community centre during the middle of a game which turned into a, ahem, musical interlude looked like it belonged in a comedy from 1973 (vintage year, by the way). Come to think of it, the concept of a 40-year-old woman who cannot bring herself to tell her parents she's gay seems out of date as well. But then, what do I know?

Possibly I was hoping for a sitcom that was a bit more edgy, a bit more American. But we are who we are: we're British and we do silly, the comedy of embarrassment. Perkins' Sara is like ­Miranda in sensible shoes, or more sensible shoes. That said, some of the embarrassment gags were quite funny. "I'm waiting for the colour of my face to dip from Sir Alex Ferguson to just a normal raspberry," said our heroine, who's a vet, although not a very good one - the type who'll forget that she's carrying a dead cat in her bag, indeed takes it to her birthday party. "Why is there a dead cat in your bag?" she was asked. "Oh, I like to swing it round rooms to see how big they are."

Actually, I liked that one too. Heading Out has got absolutely everyone in it - comedy dependables from The Thick Of It, Green Wing and Drop The Dead Donkey of fond memory, plus lovely Shelley Conn out of Mistresses - and maybe I'll stick with it. One shouldn't be too quick to judge.

Sue Perkins' Heading Out is a right-on write-off

The path­etic series asks us to accept that a sophisticated 40-year-old vet is too terrified to tell her parents she's a lesbian.

Radio Times review

The central character of Heading Out was Sara, a 40-year-old vet, afraid of commitment and very afraid of telling her parents she is gay. Except it wasn't Sara up there, it was Sue Perkins. The wry rhythms, the crafted wit tempered by stuttering diffidence, the coy friendliness twinkling through that protective fringe: Sue Perkins.

So you might say, well, that doesn't work. We don't believe it's Sara. Unlike Grandma's House or Seinfeld or Ellen, the star isn't playing someone with their own name. Perkins isn't meant to be herself, but she inescapably is because we know her too well, in a way most actors cannily never allow.

The solution, in theory: cast someone else. But this wasn't an option, partly because Sara was totally Perkins in script as well as performance, but also because such a thin alter ego let our affection transfer easily. You like Sue Perkins? (Yes.) Then you'll like her playing a woman who looks and sounds the same.

Lose her presence and you'd lose the show's considerable charm, since the supporting cast were mostly struggling as caricatured oddballs: Dominic Coleman as a neat freak, Joanna Scanlan as a bellowy, hockey-sticks life coach hired by Sara's friends to help her come out fully, Mark Heap very Mark Heapy in a bit part as an officious pet-crematorium manager.

Nothing felt real, particularly the digression when Sara played netball and the opposition performed a fearsome dance routine before the game. "It seems to be some sort of inner-city, asthmatic Haka," said Sara, exactly as Perkins would in a documentary or panel show.

The Sara/Sue thing can't sustain Heading Out for long. Sara needs to stand on her own, even if it's through Perkins revealing parts of her own character that the fans haven't seen before, and the dialogue needs to sound a lot less like the carefully written words of a presenter. So it was pleasing to see a glint of this in episode one, when Sara met a potential love interest (Shelley Conn) in the park and ineptly chatted her up.

Viewers nervous about this being a "lesbian sitcom" were probably waiting for one of them to announce that they were gay, but nobody needed to because the writing and acting were nuanced and true. Sara and Sue were both out of their comfort zone - and rising to the challenge.