Nicola Walker

It's been a thinnish week for drama but Last Tango in Halifax, Sally Wainwright's almost sugar-free romance about two pensioners - former lovestruck teenagers reunited by Facebook after 60 years - was back for a second series having won the nation's affection and a Bafta last time out.

We found the pair almost as we left them, with the excellent Derek Jacobi as Alan, recovering from a heart attack brought on by their hasty quarrel about the desirability of lesbianism in Harrogate and perhaps one too many respiratory struggles with glottal northernisms (the downfall of many a thespian). Much has been made of this septuagenarian double act, and Jacobi and Anne Reid, a natural as Celia, shone even when they were just gazing over t'moors and talking about dead people.

It would be a gentler story, though, without the complications whipped up by their clashing daughters - Gillian (Nicola Walker), a widowed single mum and grubby farmer with an impulsive sex drive, and freshly outed Caroline (Sarah Lancashire), snooty head teacher of a school that sings Jerusalem every morning - each conscious, amid declarations of love and alarm bells at the realisation that old people have minds of their own, of festering parental disapproval that recent events could only aggravate.

With Caroline's dalliance with a junior female colleague out in the open, it was Gillian's turn to stir the pot with revelations of a drunken shag with Caroline's multi-philandering husband John (a wonderfully furtive Tony Gardner). I couldn't say whether this was more transgressive than Gillian's earlier eye-opener - seeing her carrying on (Yorkshire for sexual intercourse) with a lad young enough to be her son from the local filling station - but it had Derek Jacobi shaking his head. "You pillock," he said, a word that wasn't quite equal to his disappointment (he was thinking of the shame she had brought upon the house as a pregnant 15-year-old), but served to draw a line under the affair before he had another heart attack. In the end we left the lovebirds understandably sloping off to the register office for a deserved quiet wedding. But will they get it? Tune in Tuesday.

Last Tango in Halifax returns for more generation games

One of the things that makes Last Tango so life-like is how wonderfully petty and two-faced it allows its characters to be, and the scenes between Caroline and Gillian are deftly handled by Sarah Lancashire and Nicola Walker.

Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid resume their touching romance as mature lovebirds Alan and Celia for a second season of laughter and tears. Having narrowly cheated death last time out, Alan has a renewed zest for life and, apart from a spot of rock climbing, what he really, really, wants to do is be married to Celia - and the sooner the better. As for daughters Gillian and Caroline, the near-fatal crisis appears to have brought the families closer together. But the honeymoon period hits turbulence when Caroline's wastrel ex John enters the scene and complex emotions bubble to the surface. Nicola Walker, Sarah Lancashire and Tony Gardner co-star.

At the end of the first series of Sally Wainwright's winning, warm-hearted drama, dear Alan was hovering between life and death after a heart attack. Obviously he survives, or there wouldn't be much point in returning to Yorkshire for a second helping.

It's great to see everyone again in a drama where pensioners are loved, cherished and never dismissed as inconvenient, and this time the masterly Wainwright has broadened the drama to dig deeper into other characters, notably Caroline (Sarah Lancashire, who's excellent) the newly-confident and newly out lesbian. While Alan and Celia (Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid) mend the relationship that almost fractured for ever, there's a shift in the tectonic plates in the romantic lives of their families. Just look at poor Gillian (Nicola Walker), who is made to pay for her terrible mistake in sleeping with John (Tony Gardner), Caroline's pathologically hopeless estranged husband. No one does bleating wretchedness like Gardner - no one.

Warm, romantic and BAFTA-winning, Last Tango In Halifax was a bona-fide hit last year, neatly refuting the idea that there's no audience for "stuff about old people" on TV.

It's even getting an American remake with Diane Keaton. So it's no surprise that it has quickly been brought back, nor, given that much of its strength lies in its near real-time pace, that the story resumes moments later.

Yet pacing might prove to be an issue this year, as the reunited sweethearts Alan and Celia (Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid) are now an established couple. Having missed 60 years together, they have surely too much sense to fall out again over minor misunderstandings. Their respective daughters (Nicola Walker and Sarah Lancashire) are still entangled in complicated love lives, but this can't really take over the focus of the series from the older generation. So where will the drama lie?

In the first episode, this isn't really resolved, as Alan recovers from his health scare and Celia organises their wedding, while the younger characters continue to flail. But it's still such a warm and well-observed show - with lovely bits of dialogue and performances - that maybe it doesn't matter.

Determined to prepare Sara (Sue Perkins) for the impending visit from her parents, Toria (Joanna Scanlan) takes her, Justine (Nicola Walker) and Jamie (Dominic Coleman) to her own parents' stately home in the country to give her a "coming-out trial run". A cosy half-hour of affable nonsense, kept afloat by Perkins's ability to be simultaneously droll and vulnerable.

Steve Pemberton guests as a bizarre, equine-obsessed vet inspector who turns up at Sara's very peculiar practice. The place is even more shambolic after Daniel deserts his post to play sex games in his suburban front room. So Sara's simple-minded friend Justine (Nicola Walker) steps in to staff the reception desk, adopting a northern accent because she's a fan of All Creatures Great and Small.

It's a cheerful half-hour of amiable nonsense led by Sue Perkins. I know it hasn't set the world on fire, but its heart is in the right place and the gags are often clever.

Sara's very loud, very angry French ex turns up uninvited and colonises the living room where she melodramatically writhes around on the floor. It's a madly over-the-top, heavily accented turn from the estimable Raquel Cassidy (Jack Dee's long-suffering wife in Lead Balloon).

Meanwhile, Sara (Sue Perkins, also the writer) tries to pluck up the courage to ask out the lovely Eve (Shelley Conn). It's fun and sweet-natured and there's great support from Nicola Walker and Dominic Coleman as Sara's friends, dim Justine and precious Jamie.

Sue Perkins has written and stars in BBC2's new sitcom Heading Out, concerning the adventures of a 40 year-old lesbian vet - that's to say a gay veterinarian rather than a veteran gay - who has yet to come out to her parents.

Some of the support characters are drawn far too obviously to exist as anything other than comic relief, but otherwise Perkins' script is a good one. The plot is clever, the dialogue amusing, and at least one of the sight gags is unforgettable. Plus, it's refreshing - not to say revolutionary - to have a sexually active, lesbian lead character in a sitcom.

The problem, however, is Perkins' acting - namely, that she doesn't bother attempting any. Every one of her lines is delivered with exactly the same sardonic deadpan the comedian usually reserves for panel shows, interviews and TV bake-offs.

Which would be boring but bearable if Heading Out didn't harbour ambitions to belong to that trickiest of genres, the romantic comedy. Perkins' flirtatious banter requires a nuanced performance to steer a course between arch and embarrassing. Nicola Walker, totally wasted in an undemanding best friend role, would have done it brilliantly.

Comedian, Maestro winner, Celebrity Big Brother housemate, Great British Bake Off presenter and possible future Doctor Who, Sue Perkins has somehow managed to neglect writing and starring in her very own sitcom until now.

Here she plays Sara, a vet who's too afraid to tell her parents she's gay. But as her 40th birthday approaches, Sara's loyal band of friends, which includes Nicola Walker from Spooks, have a plan to give her the courage to tell her folks.

Perhaps they could show them the spread from Tatler magazine that hailed Sue as one of Britain's coolest lesbians.

Some exciting guests are lined up for the series including Dawn French and Sue's comedy partner Mel Giedroyc. Tonight the fabulous Mark Heap drops in.