May Contain Nuts (2009)

There is a new monster on television. Her name is Ffion and she is glorious. Elizabeth Berrington plays the ultimate in pushy mothers in May Contain Nuts. She will terminate anyone who stands in the way of her daughter's extra tutoring and son's sports day dash (in which she picked him up and pushed him over the line). When another mum objected, a teacher desperately offered "Why don't we say you're all winners?" to the maternal Valkyries.

If anyone cares to run a "most irritating TV character of the year" competition I guarantee that Alice Chaplin will be near the top, if not the outright winner. Alice (a twitchy Shirley Henderson) is a middle-class mum who passes herself off as her own 11-year-old daughter to sit a posh public school's entrance exam. We are meant to feel a bit sorry for Alice, I think, because she's goaded to going to such ridiculous lengths by the other insufferably pushy and smug mums on her gated housing estate. But, blimey, she's annoying. And the bit where she dresses as a teenage girl in front of her very interested husband is just a wee bit creepy. Still, if you like jokes about the poorness of comprehensive schools and organic lollies and you enjoy seeing middle-class parents behaving like idiots, this adaptation of John O'Farrell's novel will be right up your suburban street.

This two-part comedy, based on John O'Farell's novel about affluent parents in South London trying to get their children into the best local school, comes from the same gene pool as Outnumbered. But there are crucial differences. Here the comedy, particularly the treatment of pushy parents, veers towards broad caricature. ("What terrible parents we've been," says the mother. "Alfie's four and he's never heard of Prokofiev.") It also lacks the improvised genius that made the kids' performances in Outnumbered so outstanding. On the plus side, it isn't accompanied by a vile laughter track; it boasts two engaging performances from Shirley Henderson and Darren Boyd as the beseiged parents, and it skewers the aggressive competitiveness of middle-class mores. But for all its qualities, it wields a satirical sledgehammer.

This quirky comedy-drama follows parents who will stop at nothing to get their kids into top schools. Mum Alice (Harry Potter's Shirley Henderson) wants to send her daughter to exclusive Chelsea College but the entrance exam might be too hard. So Alice slips into a school uniform, paints on spots and prepares to sit the test herself.

This quirky two-part comedy-drama makes light of one of modern-day parenting's most common neuroses - namely, getting your kids into a decent school. Adapted from a novel by John O'Farrell, it stars Shirley Henderson and Darren Boyd as anxious parents Alice and David, rapidly caught up in this madness after moving with their three children into a leafy London suburb.

The situation becomes so crazy (extra tutoring, brain-food diets etc.) that when their 11-year-old daughter Molly looks as if she's blown her chances, Alice decides to take the most drastic step of all - by posing as the child and taking the entrance exam on her behalf.

Shirley Henderson stars in this two-part comedy drama about a woman keen to send her daughter to a good school. None of us want to send our kids to a disaster prone comp such as Waterloo Road, but would you consider dressing up as your sprog and taking the 11-plus in order to get them into a posher school? That's one of the zany plots concocted by the pushy parents in this far-fetched two-part comedy drama, which stars Harry Potter ghost Shirley Henderson and Phil Mitchell's mad missus Sophie Thompson. Nutty, indeed.

Pushy, paranoid parents have long been an easy target for send ups. And this two-part adaptation of John O'Farrell's bestselling novel - quite rightly - doesn't cut them any slack. When Alice (played by Shirley Henderson, 44 - and, yes, her age is relevant) and hubby David move to a leafy enclave of South West London, they're quickly informed by a domineering uber-mummy neighbour that the local state school would confine their kids to the intellectual scrap heap and them to social wilderness. Cue Alice pulling on a school uniform (she's no Britney) to sit her daughter's grammar school entrance exams. Un-hilarious, but might raise a wry smile out of parents in similar predicaments.

This two-part comedy drama is adapted by scriptwriter Mark Burton, of Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit fame, and it stands at the school gates to watch the desperate shenanigans of ambitious parents. Shirley Henderson and Darren Boyd play Alice and David, newly moved to the area and keen to fit in with their affluent gated community - that means getting in the right school. And won't the whole process be so much easier if Alice sits the entrance exam rather than daughter Molly?

John O'Farrell's novel, on which this is based, is a funny, endearing comedy about social pressures in the suburban middle classes. The television version is a highly irritating comedy drama about people that it's hard to like. Middle class mother Alice (Shirley Henderson) goes to the ludicrous lengths of dressing up as her 11 year-old daughter to sit an entrance exam for a school to make sure she gets into it. It doesn't help that Henderson has a habit of playing irritating characters in the first place, but really, this is one that should have been left as a novel where it was much more palatable.