Tom Ellis

Sky announces new comedy as part of autumn line-up

Sue Johnston, Tom Ellis and Joanna Page are to lead the cast of a new Sky1 comedy called Gates.

Sugartown has a lot of very bad dancing

This is just a wild guess but when actress Sue Johnston looks back on a career that has taken in the glory years of Brookside and The Royle Family, dressing up as a sherbet dab and dancing like a loon to Starship's We Built This City, will not figure among the highlights.
And that was one of the better bits of Sugartown (BBC1).

A lumpy comedy drama set in an ailing seaside town up north, Sugartown has Miranda's Tom Ellis as the bad brother (he's been down south and is thus rich) returning to steal the local seaside rock factory from the good brother (poor, obviously).

In order to stop this happening, good brother's salt-of-the-earth/dippy mates are going to do a lot of very bad dancing. Because, apparently, 'Sugartown used to be the centre of dance'. And there was me, thinking that was St Petersburg.

After ten minutes of this gormless show you'll feel as if you're caught up in a dreadful theme-park ride that hurls you through dank tunnels of cliché. You will be left queasy by the sweetly sickly premise: a small northern town's fight to save its rock factory, and by its warm-hearted northern stereotypes. In short, Sugartown makes Candy Cabs look like The Sopranos. As for the plot - you've seen it before. A northern lad made good in the south (Tom Ellis) returns to his smalltown home ("Have I come up north or back in time?" Ho ho ho) to open a casino that will destroy everything Sugartown stands for. His brother, a nice chap who is about to get wed (Shaun Dooley, of course) owns the rock factory, which is in financial trouble. By the time you get this far, you will have lost the will to live.

Not unlike the desolate northern seaside resort in which it is set, this new series's brand of whimsical no-hoper comedy has definitely seen better days. That said, its tale of a band of plucky nutters, has-beens and never-will-bes uniting to save their local sweet factory from the clutches of an evil property developer is not entirely without charm - mostly thanks to the appealing cast led by Sue Johnston, Tom Ellis, Miranda Raison and Shaun Dooley. All the more bizarre then that the BBC One's schedulers should want to strangle it at birth by placing it in a ludicrously late slot, especially when the best they had to offer earlier in the evening was yet another yawn-inducing Inspector George Gently repeat.

Sugartown: BBC seaside comedy drama

Shaun Dooley, Tom Ellis and Georgia King star in Sugartown, a three-part comedy drama due to start on BBC One on Sunday 24 July 2011.

Dappers is about a pair of single mothers in Bristol. The cast includes Lenora Crichlow and Tom Ellis, but be warned the latter sports a chinny-beard monstrosity that you may find negatively affects his attractiveness levels. It's a strong cast that inexplicably includes Eddie Large skulking around in the background, but a certain amount of Wacky!Editing! doesn't quite cover the fact that there's not really much there. I would say that despite its Skins knock-off elements, the first show was the one that should get commissioned; but since the Radio Times dedicates several articles to Dappers and about half a line to Stanley Park, and they're likely to have better insider knowledge than me, the Bristol single mums could well be given the nod.

Over the past three weeks, word of mouth has steadily been growing about new BBC Two comedy, Miranda. At first glance, it's a rather curious proposition: a star vehicle for Miranda Hart, which is sort of in the style of an old-school sitcom, features Tom Ellis and Patricia Hodge, and has a mixture of slapstick style gags and great observational wit. On paper, there's no way this show would work, and for the first few minutes of an episode you're thinking 'what the hell is this?'

But persevere with it, as many have done, and the delights of this show start to become apparent. Miranda is a much warmer presence than some of her other TV appearances might have implied. Her pieces to camera are actually more endearing than annoying most of the time, and the supporting cast look like they're having a lot of fun.

Yes, it's couched in old sitcom values, but that's not neccessarily a bad thing. There's something rather sweet and familiar about it, even down to the old Croft and Perry style end credit waving sequence. A lot of the humour in here feels real and accessible. And if you're still not convinced - Grace Dent thinks it's marvellous, and she never lies.

For several years Miranda Hart has been cheerfully stealing scenes from under the noses of her more illustrious co-stars, so it was only a matter of time before TV producers rewarded her with a comedy series of her own.

Episode one of Miranda would appear to justify their faith. It has a genuine sense of fun, a distinct style, several very sharp lines and some cleverly constructed set-pieces. But, God, it was manic. In the words of Michael Winner in that memorably atrocious insurance advert: "Calm down, dear."

Hart, who also wrote the script, works very hard for her laughs, but an occasional change of pace would have been very welcome. It might also have afforded a little breathing space for some character development, which was in seriously short supply. A disproportionate amount of the jokes were predicated on Hart's size, which, personally, I don't find particularly disproportionate.

When not addressing the camera, Hart is busy bantering with joke shop co-owner Stevie (Sarah Hadland), being socially inept and lusting after hunky chef Gary (Tom Ellis) who, in an interesting reversal of traditional sitcom gender objectifying, is underwritten to the point of non-existence. Hart is much more generous towards her female co-stars, providing Patricia Hodge and Sally Phillips with the opportunity to do some scene-stealing of their own as neurotic mother and bitchy best friend respectively.

As the flat-footed comedy about PAs nears the end of its first series, Roger (Peter Wright) is surprised by a woman from his past just as his wife comes to visit. Sally (Morven Christie) tries to avoid Steven (Tom Ellis) on their first aid course and Christine (Fay Ripley) turns to medication to try to control her drinking.

Fay Ripley plays a drunken, shambolic mess of a human being in this likeable if lightweight comedy-drama series.

She's Christine Frances, head of human resources at the HQ of a struggling supermarket chain, holding things together only thanks to her trusty yet savagely abused PA, Sally (played by Morven Christie) - and looking as if she's finally facing the chop when a ruthlessly ambitious management troubleshooter (Holly Aird) comes to shake the firm up.

Sally herself, meanwhile, has fallen for hunky Steven (Tom Ellis), the arrogant guy who's personal assistant to this new bigwig - only to find he and bossy-drawers have more than just a working relationship.

A strong cast also includes Jenny Agutter, Neil Stuke, Peter Wight and Saikat Ahamed.