Faye Marsay introduces new fresher Candice

The White Queen actress joins Jack Whitehall, Zawe Ashton, Joe Thomas, Kimberley Nixon, Greg McHugh and Charlotte Ritchie for the new series of the Channel 4 comedy Fresh Meat.

Jack Whitehall - I cannot be left alone with a vibrator

JP isn't the only one with a childish sense of humour, as Kimberley Nixon and Charlotte Ritchie reveal the comedian's dildo pranks...

Vic Reeves to star in new ITV1 Miss Marple drama

Stars including Hebburn actors Vic Reeves and Kimberley Nixon, as well as Busted singer Matt Willis will feature in a new Miss Marple drama.

Jason Cook: Fresh Meat has an excellent gag rate

Jason Cook, who wrote and stars in Hebburn, tells Metro why he thinks Fresh Meat - and particularly Kimberley Nixon - is the best thing on TV.

The last-but-one slice of cult student comedy. Kingsley (Joe Thomas) is forced to fulfil his idle daydreams about being a musician when his girlfriend signs him up for an open mic gig at the student union. Josie (Kimberley Nixon) tries to keep her gambling addiction a secret and Vod (the superb Zawe Ashto) joins a famous poet for an all-night bender - with unexpectedly tragic results.

It's the Easter holidays (just on screen, you haven't missed a few months) and posh buffoon JP (the hilarious Jack Whitehall) invites his housemates to his rural retreat. Naturally, it's not as idyllic as it seems and scenes reminiscent of Withnail & I ensue. Josie (Kimberley Nixon) marks ex-fiancé Dave's wedding day in her own unique way, while socially inept Howard (Greg McHugh) and Dutch mature student Sabine (Jelka Van Houten) find themselves home alone together. There's soon a surprise proposition.

Although presented in an affectionate guise, the basic idea in Hebburn is that they're a bit dim in the north east. It starred Chris Ramsey and a highly cuffable haircut as Jack, a journalist returning to his hometown with his new wife, Sarah (Kimberley Nixon).

Hebburn, Jack told Sarah, is "where dreams come to die". That's not a bad proposition, comedy-wise, but unfortunately, Hebburn turned out on closer inspection to be the place where jokes go to die.

The one about Sarah's Jewishness sending the locals into a state of anxious cultural confusion took a particularly long and painful time to expire. It started with Jack's mum (Gina McKee) cutting holes in sandwich baps to serve them as bagels, and went on from there without going anywhere.

As Jack's father, Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves) was a curiously detached presence, as though he had decided to keep very quiet in the conviction that no one would notice it was him. No doubt this was admirable self-restraint, but how much more entertaining things would have been if he had turned to his screen wife McKee during the bagel saga and in his biggest Big Night Out accent shouted: "You wouldn't let it lie!"

Paddy Shennan's TV review: Hebburn (BBC2)

New sitcom Hebburn (BBC2, Thursday) was taking its time to warm up when, eight minutes in, the first killer line arrived. And, somehow, when I heard the mum, Pauline Pearson (Gina McKee), ask the question of her son's new wife, Sarah (Kimberley Nixon), I knew everything was going to be OK.

Radio Times review

If you sat down in front of BBC2's new sitcom Hebburn (Thursdays) wanting to be annoyed by another portrayal of common people as naïve oddballs, it didn't completely let you down. Fresh Meat star Kimberley Nixon was Sarah, the new wife of Jack (Chris Ramsey), who'd left the north-east to become a journalist but was now back to introduce his bride. His family cheerily struggled to cope with Sarah being posh, Jewish (Jack's mum threw their bacon in the bin and turned baps into bagels with an apple corer) and southern (her parents live in York).

Basically it was an extended version of the scene in The Royle Family where Anthony brings home Emma the vegetarian, and Nanna asks, "Can she have wafer-thin ham?" But what the Hebburn lot also share with the Royles is feeling warm and real. Jason Cook's script was particularly thoughtful when drawing Jack's parents, and was backed by a double casting coup: the faultless Gina McKee in a rare comic role as the hysterically proud mum, and Jim Moir/Vic Reeves, as good here as he was in Eric & Ernie as a dad who took five minutes to emerge from the kitchen when the son he adores came home. He looked happiest when Jack cracked a bad joke that could have been one of his.

Cook hasn't smashed any paradigms - Hebburn's first episode built predictably, if skilfully, to a standard sitcom finale - but he's writing about his own home town, with love. The people and relationships weren't common, but universal.

Another month, another family-based sitcom, but at least this one has a whiff of authenticity having been written by Geordie stand-up Jason Cook, based on his own experiences growing up in the North East. The six-part series tells the story of the Pearsons, a working-class family from Hebburn, who "aren't common, you know". Jack (Chris Ramsey), the Pearsons' only son, has returned home from Manchester, and is hoping to break the news to his parents that he has married a middle-class Jewish girl called Sarah (Kimberley Nixon). Mum Pauline (Gina McKee) and dad Joe (Jim Moir aka Vic Reeves) aren't sure how to react, and begin using an apple core to hollow out bread buns to make "bagels". Vicki (Lisa McGrillis), Jack's sister, isn't afraid to speak her mind, but it's her brother's rough-around-the-edges ex-girlfriend Denise (Victoria Elliott) who looks set to be the most memorable character. The humour can feel a little leaden, but the awkwardness arising from class differences and the uncertainty about what it means to have a Jewish girl around the place is amusing: "I'm fine working on a Saturday," Pauline quips, "but I'm not sure Joe could deal with being circumvented."