Susan Sarandon

Doll & Em is a six-part comedy on Sky Living co-written by and co-starring the actors Emily Mortimer and Dolly Wells and produced by Mortimer's husband, the actor Allessandro Nivola. There is also the question of the setting and target of the comedy: Hollywood.

It's very hard to escape the smugness that creeps into any LA-based show that is self-satirising. Even something with the British self-deprecation of Episodes couldn't help but trade on the shock value of a major celebrity (Matt LeBlanc) acting as we believe actors to act: spoilt and cynical. And yet, no matter how vile and superficial the stock pool party in the Hollywood hills is made to seem, the overriding impression is: but wouldn't you like to be here?

One such pool party duly made an appearance in the second episode of Doll & Em, which centres on the semi-autobiographical relationship between successful actor Em (Mortimer) and her best friend Doll (Wells), who has come out from England to work as her personal assistant. There were even some major film star celebrities present in Chloë Sevigny and Susan Sarandon. Was it going to be another dose of self-celebration masquerading as oh-so-cool irony?

That it worked a treat was partly because no big deal was made of it. There were no outrageously philistine producers or predatory starlets. The comedy was not in the manner of the party but its manners - the missed air kiss, the curious asides, the desperate passive-aggressive anxiety that goes into maintaining the unspoken hierarchy of stardom.

In truth, the Sarandon plotline wasn't particularly amusing, but the observation elsewhere was subtle yet forensic, like a sensitive but thorough strip search. It was particularly revealing of the intimate competition surreptitiously conducted between female friends.

As both women fell under the rakish spell of a smooth producer called Buddy (Jonathan Cake), they traded sob stories of their dead fathers in a semi-naked battle to be seduced. That we know in real life they are the daughters of the late John Mortimer and John Wells only added to the comedy of unsayable truths.

It's an awkward, funny and deceptively clever confection that is saved from Hollywood hipness by the unmistakable warmth of the complex relationship at its heart. Perhaps it also helps that it's made by HBO.

Andrew Anthony, The Observer, 1st March 2014

Best mates turned star and assistant Emily Mortimer and Dolly Wells take their comedy alter egos off to a Hollywood party where Susan Sarandon and Chloë Sevigny are among the faces mingling, moving and shaking - and Dolly gets the chance to practise her babysitting skills with disastrous results.

But it's in the after-party hot tub that things crank up a gear as the duo compete for the favours of smooth-talking producer Buddy (Jonathan Cake).

Carol Carter and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, Metro, 25th February 2014