Vicki Pepperdine

Joanna Scanlan & Vicki Pepperdine on women in comedy

As they join the cast of BBC sitcom Rev. for its third series, Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine talk churches, their previous hit Getting On, and women's place in comedy.

Baby Smallbone makes a grand entrance to open the third series of this lugubriously endearing sitcom, joining her dad - the world-weary but eternally optimistic Rev Adam (Tom Hollander) - and her slightly less idealistic mum Alex (Olivia Colman).

The divine cherry on top of the comedy cake is the perfect pairing of Getting On's Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine as cost-cutting church types who sit somewhere below God but well above our Rev on the heavenly ladder.

This puts them in a position to 'reorganise' his church out of existence unless he can come up with some PC box-ticking inspiration pretty darn quick.

Radio Times review

St Saviour's Church is under threat as we return to east London and the pastoral care of the Rev Adam Smallbone (Tom Hollander), who's now dad to a sweet baby daughter. As he changes nappies, the new Area Dean and Diocesan Secretary (Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine) drop dark hints of closure.

There aren't any belly laughs in Rev., but that doesn't matter as there are plenty of smiles, because it's that rarity, a good-hearted sitcom without guile or meanness. Adam is a genial pragmatist (except when it comes to fixing the church's dangerously faulty wiring), devout, of course, but without any of that off-putting zeal. He wants to improve his community's grim children's playground and launches a fundraising campaign with the local imam (Fonejacker Kayvan Novak).

All of Rev's great characters are back, notably the terrifying Archdeacon (Simon McBurney) and the decrepit Colin (Steve Evets).

Video: British Comedy Awards interviews

Sara Shulman interviews Johnny Vegas, Steve Coogan, Jack Whitehall, Vicki Pepperdine, Joanna Scanlan, Tom Rosenthal and Ryan Sampson at The British Comedy Awards.

Writers' Guild Awards 2013 shortlists

Nominations for Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine, Joanna Scanlan, Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain, Stefan Golaszewski, Susan Calman, Sanjeev Kohli, Donald McLeary, David Sedaris, Alice Lowe and Steve Oram.

Despite the impeccable credentials of everyone involved (Jessica Hynes, Rebecca Front, Vicki Pepperdine), Up The Women just doesn't fly. For a start, there's no real point; any political edge is sidestepped or dampened by the air of farce. And the humour itself is limited to double entendre, sight gags and broad physical comedy. Why couldn't the BBC have just commissioned a full series of Hynes and Julia Davis's scabrous Lizzie and Sarah instead?

How many Edwardians does it take to change a light bulb? About eight if Up the Women is anything to go by, though as one of them said: "It's hard to see how this would replace the candle."

Jessica Hynes wrote in this newspaper last week that her three-part sitcom about a group of failed suffragettes was originally intended as a film. It says nothing too complimentary about our priorities that the project ended up as a BBC4 micro-budget three-parter, shot in front of a studio audience in a two-room set.

As it was, the traces of its film script origins were detectable in Hynes's performance as the clever but timid Margaret. She proposed that the Banbury Intricate Craft Circle revitalise itself as the Banbury Intricate Craft Circle Politely Request Women's Suffrage. Hynes appeared to be acting in the uplifting, thoughtful movie that you would never have quite got round to seeing at your local arthouse cinema. Oddly, though, she seemed to be surrounded by performances, from Rebecca Front, Vicki Pepperdine et al, that were sketch-show broad.

The script, too, careered between these two registers. Still, the brilliant Pepperdine had some funny false teeth and mugged her way through a quite silly knob gag. That just about got my floating vote.

Up the Women has a great premise: a ladies' craft circle is politicised by Margaret (Jessica Hynes) into forming a group to "politely request women's suffrage". It also has a great cast, including Rebecca Front as a dissenting snob ("Does your husband know you were cavorting with skirted anarchists?") and Vicki Pepperdine as a simple-minded "old maid". All it lacked was a great first episode. There were some overdone historical gags (one about a lightbulb being a "ridiculous fad" seemed to last for several years), with suffragettes described as "mannish, flat-fronted, bottom-heavy spinsters".

Up the Women seemed undecided whether to aim for a suffrage-themed Dad's Army vibe, or Blackadder-style absurdist drollery, falling nervously in between. Saying that, first episodes are notoriously tricky, and there was more than enough to merit another peek. My favourite bit was Margaret's earnest, quavering, suffragette singsong that attempted to be rousing but ending up sounding as if somebody from Songs of Praise was being gently lowered into a well.

Rebecca Front stars in Up the Women, written by Jessica Hynes, who co-penned the rather brilliant Spaced (1999-2001) but who, strangely, has never received the same acclaim as her co-writer Simon Pegg.

Up the Women is traditional in its format - it's set mostly in one room, in this instance a village hall where the Bunbury Intricate Crafts Circle meet. It's 1910, and one of BICC's members, Margaret (Hynes) has been seduced by Suffragettism while on a day trip to London. The group's self-appointed bossy-boots leader Helen (Front), meanwhile, is having none of it when Margaret meekly suggests the group might support women's emancipation - "Women should not have the vote. We are simple, emotional creatures."

Margaret is a brainy woman who has long since accepted that women must always defer to men, even those markedly less intelligent, and a good running gag involved her explaining electricity to the overbearing caretaker (Adrian Scarborough), who was struggling to fit a new-fangled lightbulb.

The characters - particularly Vicki Pepperdine's toothy spinster - are drawn in broad strokes, and occasionally the humour (peonies being misheard for penis, for instance) is groaningly obvious. But there are some neat lines too, and superb acting from a fantastic cast who look like they're enjoying themselves, including Judy Parfitt doing a nice turn as Helen's decidedly naughty mother, Myrtle, sexually liberated long before the term was invented by the Pankhursts' spiritual daughters. Worth staying with.