Katherine Parkinson

Cornwall's grumpiest GP moves to a new home on Monday night - but the big question is whether he'll be making good on his threat to move to London.

Of course he won't. The idea of the blood-phobic doctor taking up a post as a surgeon was laughable and now he has a baby with Louisa, (Caroline Catz) there's even more reason to stay.

Not that he sees it that way in the slightest. Oh no. As loyal fans of the show will know, the good doctor must always be gently chivvied into following the script for normal human behaviour - despite himself.

His brain simply hasn't been programmed for complex social ­interactions and the possibility that his grouchiness is in fact down to ­Asperger's syndrome is ­almost ­impossible to ignore tonight.

Just watch the way that he holds his baby son like an unexploded bomb, or hear how he refers to people by their ailments rather than by name and the diagnosis becomes clearly obvious.

But don't expect the new GP to spot it. The incoming Dr Dibbs (Getting On star Joanna Scanlan) has already installed herself in his surgery and she has enough ailments of her own to worry about him.

But as Martin Clunes stays put for series five, two other cast members won't be returning.

Katherine Parkinson (who played dippy ­receptionist Pauline) has moved on and there's some news about auntie Joan that's so shocking, the doctor almost registers a flicker of emotion. But it is almost.

The second in the series of Comedy Showcase pilots, Coma Girl isn't the strongest of shows - and I can't see it getting a full series.

The girl in question, Lucy (Anna Crilly, who starred in last week's Comedy Lab pilot Anna & Katy), is trapped in a coma full of surreal moments - like seemingly being at a party and a pier, which made very little sense.

The main goings on was with the people who were coming to see her, especially three school friends: Siobhan (Sarah Solemani), a TV presenter who has recently got fired from her job, Pip (Katherine Parkinson), a bohemian woman, and Sarah (Katy Wix from Anna & Katy), a mother of three. There is also Lucy's mother Mrs. Kay (Julia Deakin) who is constantly taking photos in the hope of building up evidence so she can sue someone on her daughter's behalf.

For me the show was slow going. There was the odd good moment (Pip giving the comatose Lucy a copy of last week's Heat magazine to read), but I think the problem is that this show would probably work better as a comedy drama rather than a sitcom. The idea of a comedy about someone in a coma isn't a new idea (see the radio sitcom Vent) so it can work, but it wasn't presented too well in this format.

There's another issue I have with the show...the theme tune. If you have a show about a woman in a coma, surely "Girlfriend in a Coma" by The Smiths would be the ideal tune to play?

Unlike last week's Chickens, there wouldn't seem to be a whole lot of mileage in tonight's Comedy Showcase pilot.

Coma Girl is, not surprisingly, about a girl in a coma who - just like Stella in this week's Corrie - has also been hit by a car and now lies in a hospital bed.

While she's under she's visited by three old school friends as well as her mum.

From her mother's get-up, she might also turn out to be a time traveller from the 1950s, but the more likely explanation is that hair and wardrobe were just having a bit of an off day.

The friends are very well played by Katy Wix, Sarah Solemani, and Katherine Parkinson, while Anna Crilly - best known as the fabulous Magda in Lead Balloon - has the rather thankless task of playing the unfortunate patient Lucy, who's trapped in an Ashes To Ashes-style dream world.

It's pleasant enough but unless Coma Girl wakes up, or develops a much more interesting dream-life, it might be kinder to take this one off life support.

Alan Davies' Whites. Hulu. Now.

Should you find yourself in need of a new British comedy fix, hope over to Hulu and check out Whites, starring Alan Davies, Darren Boyd and Katherine Parkinson.

The return of cuddly comedy

The nominations for Saturday's British Comedy Awards are full of comics you would happily introduce to your grandmother. How refreshing.

Doing for rambling what Rev did for inner-city religion, The Great Outdoors debuted on BBC4 last autumn and now BBC2 is repeating the three episodes. Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil's charming sitcom meets a group of walkers led by Mark Heap just as they're joined by pushy new member Ruth Jones, who tries to make the gang go her way. Often literally. Also rambling are Katherine Parkinson, Steve Edge and Stephen "Skoose from Whites" Wight.

Katherine Parkinson Interview

The IT Crowd star, currently tackling Ayckbourn at the National, on why good comedy needs an element of darkness.

I've never found Alan Davies as hilarious as he finds himself on QI, but I did laugh at his new sitcom Whites, in which he played Roland, the bored genius head chef of a country-house restaurant, lazing about dictating a memoir about his love for offal instead of getting on with some work. Admittedly, it wasn't great that he started with a joke from the back of the fridge ("If God didn't want us to eat animals he wouldn't have made them out of meat"), but he made up for it with sharper asides as he sparred likably with demanding colleagues, notably front of house manager Caroline (the great Katherine Parkinson from The IT Crowd) who thought Roland ought to do more vegetarian, and frazzled sous chef Bib (Darren Boyd), who thought Roland ought to do more of anything.

The plot - turning on the arrival of a top publisher who might take an interest in his book - kept hope and disappointment simmering nicely, while the arrival of an intense young apprentice (please don't let him turn out to be a vampire) offered slower intrigue. With Marco Pierre White's unruly hair and Jay Rayner's beard, Roland seems a composite of the sort of modern foodie we associate with frantic TV kitchens full of effing and blinding, so it was refreshing the way he suffered his fools - dim waitress Kiki, butterfingered Axel ("Careful with the plates - you're not at a Greek wedding") - like children with learning difficulties. Even the food looked real.

The very idea of a new sitcom on BBC2 makes my heart sink a little - all that British comic talent ploughing through a script in search of a gag - but it's probably best to start with low expectations. That way, when a programme like Whites comes along, one may be pleasantly surprised.

Given that it's set in the chaotic, high-pressure world of the restaurant kitchen, Whites is a surprisingly even-tempered thing. It stars Alan Davies as a self-absorbed executive chef at a country house hotel (he looks the part; in fact he looks exactly like Marco Pierre White), Darren Boyd as his demoralised sous chef and The IT Crowd's Katherine Parkinson as the catty front-of-house. There's a clumsy kitchen worker who spills things all the time, but there's also a creepy, ambitious agency cook named Skoose who adds some genuine menace. Whites occupies territory somewhere between dinnerladies and Peep Show (which I accept isn't much help to anyone trying to find it on a comedy map). Peep Show's Isy Suttie and Matt King (who co-wrote this) even turn up, as a hapless waitress and a dodgy meat supplier (he's dodgy, not the meat; not so far, anyway).

If it sounds surreal, inventive, original and hilarious then I'm over- selling it. It's gentle, subtly played, often funny and quite promising. At times it got a bit predictable, but I blame the leisurely pace, which sometimes allowed the viewer to catch up with the joke, and occasionally overtake it. In last night's episode the best laughs belonged to the minor characters, especially Isy Suttie's Kiki, who is kind, thoughtful and at least a half a bubble off plumb. "I remember my first day," she tells evil new boy Skoose. "I needed the loo but I was too scared to asked where it was, so I ended up going behind a gravestone in the chapel out back, and I thought I saw a ghost but it was just wee steam."

My main criticism of Whites is that it doesn't actually offer much new insight into the workings of a restaurant kitchen. Perhaps I've sat through too many episodes of Masterchef: the Professionals to be surprised, or even curious. Even the menu struck me as being a little tame. Comedy's one thing, but this show needs to take the cooking to the next level.

Talk about a sitcom whose time has come. Thanks to series like Hell's Kitchen, The Restaurant, Kitchen Nightmares and MasterChef, restaurant kitchens are now as familiar to us as the inside of our own fridges.

We know they're all run by shouting egomaniacs who hate vegetarians and love the sound of their own voices, so we need no further introduction to the world of Whites. Whites (as in chefs' whites, as opposed to Marco Pierre) is written by Oliver Lansley and Matt King - best known as the sublimely surreal Super Hans from Peep Show. It's based on King's own experiences working in a Michelin-starred restaurant and he also appears briefly in this episode as a delivery man. It's just a pity that he's not in it more.

It's hilariously well-observed but, because it isn't straining for belly laughs every single second, characters also have room to breathe and just be themselves.

Alan Davies is perfectly cast as head chef Roland White, (again, no relation to Marco) who is too busy to help out during service because he's dictating his memoirs. Sample, genius quote: "If God didn't want us to eat animals he wouldn't have made them out of meat."

White's put-upon sous chef Bib (Darren Boyd), who is left to soldier on alone, is initially delighted when Roland takes on an apprentice to help out. But his happiness quickly dissolves into panic when the newcomer, Skoose, turns out to be a borderline sociopath.

Also in the mix are The IT Crowd's Katherine Parkinson as front of house manager Caroline, the excellent Maggie Steed as eccentric hotel owner Claudia, and Peep Show's Isy Suttie as terminally thick waitress Kiki.

Watching this, you're reminded of why good chefs bang on about only using topquality ingredients. This recipe brings out the best in all of them.