Morgana Robinson's The Agency

'Natalie Cassidy' is the star of the show again this week. Morgana Robinson obviously knows she's her best impression and she's not afraid to milk it. Tonight, Natalie's agent rings her with some fantastic news: Morgan Freeman is auditioning female actresses for a role in his new film and she's been invited to attend. The role is perfect for her: she's to play a cockney astronaut. But she can't find anyone to look after her grumpy old dad (he's actually my favourite character in tonight's show) so she'll have to take him with her to meet Morgan Freeman, but he's stuffed in his armchair, refusing to "go up London". We also see Cheryl Cole who's through with worthless men and is trying to find a new soulmate with various pets, but neither the cute wee dog nor the tortoise can seem to understand her emotional needs.

This mock doc - following a talent agency's celeb clients, all of whom are played by Robinson - seems on the surface to be subtler than most impression shows. In its second episode, though, it suffers familiar diminishing returns. Each character has one weekly variation on their one basic joke: if that's not funny, the whole thing's a grind. Tonight, Mel and Sue (though you couldn't tell it was supposed to be them) decide to try some time apart.

In Morgana Robinson's The Agency impressionist imagines that all of the celebrities that she mimics are represented by the same agent. The agent in question is Vincent Mann (Calvin Clerkin) who runs the wittily titled Mann Management and looks constantly exasperated by his client base. Those of us who'd watched Robinson's previous shows such as The Morgana Show and Very Important People will recognise the majority of the impressions here with Fearne Cotton, Adele and Cheryl Cole being some of Vincent's many clients. However the main focus of the first episode of this mockumentary focused primarily on Eastenders actress Natalie Cassidy as she prepared for the National Television Awards. I felt Morgana did well in crafting a story for the put-upon Cassidy who tried her best to look after her family whilst at the same time being a famous soap actress. Robinson's performance presented the fictional Cassidy in an incredibly sympathetic light and I felt she was also able to impersonate her mannerisms perfectly. The same can't be said for Robinson's impression of Danny Dyer which certainly wasn't nearly as nuanced and instead involved her shouting in a cockney accent. The story in which Dyer also tried to become a children's author wasn't that amusing and most of the gags were pretty obvious. It didn't help that Robinson's Danny Dyer sounded incredibly similar to her Gregg Wallace and if she wasn't made up to look like each of them then I think you'd struggle to spot the difference. The other prominent storyline in this first episode saw Vincent try to secure some stage work for Miranda Hart to broaden her range. Unfortunately Miranda couldn't deal with the Pinter material without launching into her comedy routine, irritating both the director and her co-stars in the process. Whilst I found Robinson's Miranda impression to be quite impressive, the story itself was quite obvious and as an audience member I knew exactly where it was going. Overall I found The Agency to be incredibly hit-and-miss and if hadn't been for the well-imagined Natalie Cassidy segments I may not have made it through the entire episode. Although I do feel Robinson is a talented impressionist, I don't think The Agency works as well as it should and as there's six more episodes to go I can't see myself sticking around for any more.