Kathy Burke

It's fair to say that Catherine Tate has had an interesting couple of years; from her role in the American version of The Office to acting on the stage, I feel she's come a long way since her sketch show. However this week saw her revive one of her most popular sketch show characters, Joannie Taylor, for a one-off special Nan.

At first I thought Nan would be simply an extended version of the sketch show, but the plot of the programme was fairly endearing. It saw Nan being paired with teenage volunteer Alice (Ami Metcalf) while her grandson (Mathew Horne) is off building a school in Africa. The main thrust of the episode concerns Nan's taps and her constant fights with the council to get it fixed. In her own unique style Nan's interactions with council representative Miss Donnelly (Nikki Wardley) land her in hot water and eventually see her serve two community service orders. Eventually though Nan is able to save the day by allowing her Indian neighbours to host a wedding in her flat.

Anybody who loved Nan's foul language and bad attitude wouldn't have been disappointed by what they saw here. However I was surprised that Tate fleshed out the character especially in constructing a relationship between Nan and Alice. I feel the episode really benefited from the appearance of Ami Metcalf, who so good as the young Kathy Burke in Walking and Talking. Metcalf and Tate made a fine double act and I particularly enjoyed Alice's confrontation with Miss Donnelly. The focus on the bureaucracy at the council was also a story that most people could identify with and they could understand Nan's frustration and the way she dealt with the problem was completely believable.

Ultimately I found Nan to be funny, endearing and a sitcom that was well-paced throughout. If all the episodes are of the same quality as this special then I wouldn't mind seeing Nan return for a full series at some point. But for now I can definitely say that Nan was a big surprise as I didn't see myself enjoying it at all.

Kathy Burke keeps the faith in convent school-comedy

O'Malley takes the strictures of the '50s Catholic church and lampoons them mercilessly, from the nuns striking the fear of God into their unworldly charges, to the convent girls themselves, for whom mortal sin battles for space with boys, cigarettes and rock 'n' roll.

Kathy Burke interview: 'Work non-stop? That's not me'

It's been 10 years since Kathy Burke stuck two fingers up at stardom. Here she talks about loving theatre, hating writing - and why Richard Dawkins gives her the hump.

The school-based sitcom playground is getting pretty crowded, with the bell just rung on Big School and Jack Whitehall's Bad Education still running around dropping its shorts at anyone who's interested. But for my money the pick of the Class of 2013 is Some Girls (BBC3), which scores one vital A* over the opposition: it looks as though it's set in a school that might actually exist.

On the face of it, the group of south London bffs at the heart of Some Girls is painfully PC: one sorted black girl, one ditzy white blonde, one brainy Asian and one baby Kathy Burke. So it's full credit to the spark in the writing of Bernadette Davies and a set of confident performances from the four leads that this formula adds up to more than the sum of its parts. It works.

Led from the front by Adelayo Adedayo as Viva, who was facing down the tricky issue of dumping a fit boyfriend who was too thick for her, last night's episode centred on the sudden death of a science teacher - cue the arrival of Broadchurch's Jonathan Bailey as unashamed lust object - and the fallout therein.

It was all dealt with delightfully distastefully, as voiced by the straight-talking Aussie gym teacher/resident hard-faced bitch: 'We'll provide a counsellor - if you can't talk it over with your mates like a normal person.'

There's a lot that's very, very good about The Mimic, which stars the gifted impressionist Terry Mynott as lowly maintenance man Martin Hurdle.

It's the second episode tonight, but if you missed the first all you need to know is that Martin escapes his humdrum life by doing other people's voices - everyone from Alan Carr to Christopher Walken - and last week he discovered he has an 18-year-old son called Steven. Probably. We're still waiting for the results of the DNA test.

As a means of doing something more interesting with impressions than just going down the Dead Ringers route (or Very Important People, which was Mynott's last gig) this gets full marks for originality.

And the excellent supporting cast includes Ami Metcalf (last seen playing the young Kathy Burke in Walking And Talking) who plays colleague Chelsea, and Neil Maskell (fresh from playing Utopia's hit man) as a depressed newsagent whose foray into internet dating tonight is inspired.

But the mixture of occasionally crude humour and misty-eyed pathos is a tough one to pull off successfully. And that soundtrack is one dollop of syrup too far.

After the success of Chris O'Dowd's Moone Boy and Kathy Burke's Walking And Talking it was hard not to expect big things from Sky1's latest lot of Little Crackers.

But I can't see any of this year's first batch making it to a full series. Joanna Lumley's much-hyped look back at her early modelling days was particularly uninspiring. But with efforts from the likes of Paul O'Grady, Sharon Horgan and Jason Manford still to come this week perhaps we shouldn't give up all hope just yet.

Sky's star-filled success story of recent years has been this yuletide anthology, a sprinkling of cheer across the festive schedules. Two of the autobiographical shorts have even sired fantastic series - Kathy Burke's Walking and Talking and Chris O'Dowd's Moone Boy.

The third series opens by whisking us back to the swinging and sexist Sixties. Baby, Be Blonde sees the young Joanna Lumley (played with wide-eyed charm by newcomer Ottilie Mackintosh) contending with haircuts and wig-fittings before her jittery first assignment.

Daniel Ings is uproariously awful as a photographer who marshals his models like animals ("Put the hippo at the back"). And Lumley, making her directorial debut as well as a cameo as a dragonish fashionista, reveals the facts behind the fun in a 15-minute look behind the scenes. The next Little Cracker, featuring Rebecca Front, is on Sky1 tomorrow.

Series 26, episode one: team captains Noel Fielding and Phill Jupitus are back in their chairs for more rude pop-based quizzing. In the presenter's seat - still without a regular occupant since the peerless Simon Amstell resigned - is Kathy Burke. Her excellent comedy Walking and Talking showed she knows and loves her pop music, at least if it was released in 1979. Among the guests are Fazer from N-Dubz and surprise Olympic long jump champion Greg Rutherford.

The pigeon-holers have really had their work cut out for them with Chris O'Dowd's acting career.

Its varied highlights so far have included roles as Roy in The IT Crowd, a frustrated Victorian writer in The Crimson Petal And The White[/u] and, most recently, Hollywood heart-throb status in ­Bridesmaids.

Now he's going back to his home town of Boyle, County Roscommon, to play the ­imaginary friend of 12-year-old Martin Moone (David Rawle). Co-written by O'Dowd, if Moone Boy's nostalgic ­innocence reminds you of anything, it's likely to be Kathy Burke's Walking And Talking which also started life as one of Sky's Little Crackers series a couple of Christmases ago.

Launched with a two-parter, episode one is utterly stolen by Simon Delaney, who plays the father of two very nasty school bullies, while episode two follows Martin's mum's campaign to get Mary Robinson elected as Ireland's first female president.

But it also features an ­unforgettably skin-crawling cameo from Steve Coogan as fishmonger ­"Touchy" Feeley.

And we love the show's theme tune from Irish punk band, The Sultans Of Ping FC.

As befits his imaginary friend status, O'Dowd takes a bit of a back seat in terms of screen time, but it seems he's got another hit on his hands.

Kathy Burke's Walking And Talking, Sky Atlantic, review

Kathy Burke's drama about her teenage years in 1970s London very funny and oddly uplifting, writes Martin Chilton.