The Impressions Show With Culshaw & Stephenson

Debra Stephenson makes a good impression

Debra Stephenson made her name playing hard-faced tough women on shows like Coronation Street but her latest role as an impressionist showed she's game for a laugh.

Looking back, Debra Stephenson was wasted on the likes of Bad Girls and Corrie, much though I loved her in both roles. Having teamed up here with the splendid Jon Culshaw, she's able to remind us what a fabulous and versatile mimic she is.

TV matters: The Impressions Show

Jon Culshaw does a spot-on impression of . . . Alistair McGowan.

Did Jon Culshaw make a good impression?

The Impressions Show got off to a rocky start in some ways, but it was an easy and undemanding watch - although quite why BBC1 have decided to broadcast it at 9.45pm on a Saturday is anyone's guess! It would find a more appreciative audience around 8pm on a weekday, if you ask me.

Jon Culshaw (Dead Ringers) and Debra Stephenson (Frankie Baldwin in Coronation Street) join forces in this new sketch show featuring their range of almost flawless impersonations. With his brilliant George W Bush on Dead Ringers, Culshaw has already established himself as a John Sessions for the Noughties. It's remarkable, though, that Stephenson hasn't unveiled her impersonating skill until now. She does a mean (in both senses) Anne Robinson, and performs some impressive facial gymnastics as a hyperventilating Davina McCall getting so excited over a bedtime story she ends up upside down. As is eternally the way with these shows, the quality of the jokes lags behind the success of the impressions themselves. The sight of Culshaw and Stephenson as Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley on the sofa of The One Show is as banal as the original - though it's made up for by Culshaw's superbly dead-eyed Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall barbecuing a polecat on Autumnwatch in front of Stephenson's Kate Humble. Most impressively of all, Stephenson nails the voices of not just one but both Minogues - Kylie as an irrepressibly sunny little pixie, and Dannii a steely, glacial automaton.

You can picture the scene... an executive at BBC entertainment groans as ITV's Harry Hill's TV Burp grows more popular with each series. "Get me something like that!" she/he barks. "Something that takes the mickey out of everyone on the telly. People like watching that on a Saturday." The result is far, far better than you'd expect. Either the producers have crammed all their best efforts into the first episode or this mock-celebrity-filled sketch show is a winner. It doesn't hurt that Jon Culshaw and Debra Stephenson are right on the money with almost all their impressions. Culshaw gets Michael McIntyre's strange, high/low voice perfectly and his Ross Kemp on Gangs spoof where Kemp meets the Famous Five ("The whole gang is clearly off their head on ginger beer") works a treat. Stephenson, meanwhile, is equally convincing as Dannii Minogue or a grimacing Davina McCall. Why it's quite so enjoyable to see, say, Ray Mears impersonated to a tee or some lovingly imagined links from The One Show is anyone's guess. But it is.

Does the world really need a new impressions show? Probably not, but this new vehicle for Jon Culshaw, along with Corrie refugee Debra Stephenson isn't too bad on the whole. Katy Brand and Kevin Bishop could learn a thing or two from this.

Jon Culshaw on The Impressions Show

Ahead of his new BBC series, Jon Culshaw tells Andrew Pettie the secrets of his uncanny impressions.

Debra is a dead ringer for comedy

As a 13-year-old, Debra Stephenson wowed Hull audiences with her uncanny knack of mimicking celebrities.