Vicki Pepperdine

The latest offering from Julia Davis (Nighty Night) focuses on a holiday under canvas. It's a trip to celebrate the 50th birthday of Robin (Steve Pemberton), who's married to Fiona (Vicki Pepperdine), a woman so assertive she puts the campsite kettle "out of bounds" to maintain tent-life authenticity. But can Fiona's itinerary-making authoritarianism survive the arrival of Tom (Rufus Jones) and his new partner (Davis)? A comedy that's best when it's close to the knuckle, which is most of the time.

This new comedy from Julia Davis is brilliantly slow and agonising. You might cringe as you watch the sour and snappy Fi (Vicki Pepperdine), as with comedies like The Office where you wince at David Brent's lack of social awareness.

Fi is a brittle, neurotic woman, dressed permanently in beige, who refers to her kind and timid husband, Robin (Steve Pemberton), as "stupid idiot." She has organised a camping weekend for Robin's birthday and has planned everything with terrifying precision, so when things start to unravel so does Fi's temper. "This isn't really going to work for me" she seethes on viewing the sleeping arrangements and on hearing new visitors arrive unannounced. Even the use of the campsite kettle infuriates her: "It's for an emergency situation only which we would have to define in the moment!"

So when Tom turns up with his frisky new girlfriend who's clad in leopard-skin, the tension is nearly unbearable. With such rough guests, how can Fi possibly police her son's mealtimes and make sure he doesn't eat anything "vaguely homosexual", like sun-dried tomatoes or baguettes?

A second outing for Harry Hill as the Steve Jobs of slapstick inventions, absent-mindedly terrorising the quaint village of Great Pagwell with his daft contraptions. Branestawm's pre-eminence is challenged by snide Professor Algebrain (Steve Pemberton), a heel-clicking Euro-rival determined to win a lucrative inventing competition bequeathed by the late Lady Pagwell. A considerable amount of buffoonery ensues. The game cast includes Vicki Pepperdine and Simon Day.

In the year in which we learnt that BBC Three was to move online, the channel proved that it still could deliver the goods when it came to sitcoms. Johnny Sweet's romantic comedy was surprisingly charming as we followed his character Tom's attempts to have a successful romance with Cara Theobold's Ellen. What made Together so unique was the fact that you barely saw the central couple on screen together yet you still believed in their romance. Additionally Sweet was able to assemble a fine supporting cast most notably Alex McQueen and Vicki Pepperdine who almost stole the show as Tom's parents. Funny and charming in equal measure, we're just hoping that Together still finds life on BBC Three's online platform as it more than deserves to.

Radio Times review

Harry Hill returns as the multi-spectacled boffin of Norman Hunter's children's books. After Branestawm's TV introduction last Christmas, his cartoonish adventures are once again adapted by in-demand writer Charlie Higson. This time the chocolate-box village of Pagwell is, fortuitously, hosting an invention contest. But has Branestawm met his match in the ingenious Professor Algebrain (Steve Pemberton)?

Among an extraordinary cast giving fruity performances are Diana Rigg, Simon Day, Vicki Pepperdine, Matt Berry and his absurd intonations, Sophie Thompson and David Mitchell. From the clips available to RT, it's wildly eccentric, old-school and very funny - with a barking mad chase sequence.

TV preview: Together, BBC3, episode 3

It's hard to decide what I like the most about Together. Alex MacQueen's inspired performance as pedantic dad-he-was-born-to-play Ashley? Vicki Pepperdine's fussy trapped-in-her-marriage mum Lesley or Jonny Sweet's starring role as Tom, the man-child trying to woo Ellen (Cara Theobold).

Together is written by and stars Johnny Sweet; a performer who up to know I hadn't really rated which made this charming sitcom all the more surprising. Sweet plays Tom a rather kind-hearted if foolish guy whose sister (Katy Wix) is constantly setting him up on blind dates which go rather badly. During the episode Tom keeps encountering Ellen (Cara Theobold) a rather outspoken young woman whose ex-boyfriend Luke (Jaz Deol) is constantly trying to win her back. The problem with the first episode of a romantic comedy series is that we have to sit through a number of missed opportunities before the central couple hit it off. The missteps in the first episode of Together include Tom seeing Ellen naked at a life drawing class and later encountering a rather saucy couple as he tries to gatecrash a party she's attending. Although Sweet crafts several awkward moments during the episode they never feel embarrassing and rather surprisingly most of them ring true. Sweet is helped by the fact that the script has been edited by Tim Key and Jeremy Dyson who have obviously aided in the general flow of the comedy therefore no scene outstays its welcome and almost every moment is played for laughs but at the same time the central relationship is never forgotten. In their handful of scenes together I felt that Sweet and Theobold had natural chemistry and I found the final scene particularly touching. However the majority of the highlights in this first episode came courtesy of Vicki Pepperdine and Alex McQueen as Tom's well-meaning parents. McQueen's soliloquy about the right temperature in which to serve rhubarb yoghurt was especially hilarious as were Pepperdine's attempts to dispose of her on-screen husband's junk. Even though Together never blew me away, I found it to be a charming sitcom full of promise and one that I'm definitely going to stick with for the time being.

BBC Four's 'Puppy Love' cancelled after one season

BBC Four has cancelled Puppy Love, the latest comedy series from Getting On co-creators Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine, after airing one six episode season, TVWise can reveal.

Radio Times review

I suppose this suffragette sitcom should be described as "gentle", meaning "it's not very funny but watching it won't kill you". It started life on BBC Four back in 2013 and now comes to BBC Two, where it remains a solid, old-fashioned, one-set, studio-bound comedy centred upon the 1910 Banbury Intricate Craft Circle Politely Request Women's Suffrage group.

Their well-meaning leader Margaret (Jessica Hynes, also co-writer) urges her little band of friends to go on hunger strike in sympathy with their imprisoned sisters. But Margaret becomes obsessed by the very thought of "buns", while Gwen (Vicki Pepperdine, unrecognisable with a set of rabbity teeth) brings industrial quantities of cheese to the village hall.

Radio Times review

Writer Roy Clarke's revisiting of the beloved Ronnie Barker vehicle is completely timeless, which is doubtless part of its appeal. There are no crude 21st-century technological innovations in that little corner shop in Yorkshire, it could be set in any year from the 1930s.

There's also a pervading feeling of a cosy community of the type that probably either doesn't exist or never did exist, as a series of oddballs passes through the doors of Arkwright's stores. Mrs Dawlish (Vicki Pepperdine) is the comedy nuisance here, a snobby local who's taken aback that such an old-fashioned corner shop is still flourishing.

But there are signs that Granville (David Jason) is modernising - he wants to open a coffee shop!