TV review: Inside No. 9 - The Bill

A masterclass of suspenseful writing and comic ingenuity, Inside No. 9 has returned with a vengeance and we can't wait to see what next week brings.

Radio Times review

Greybridge School's embarrassing Parent Teacher Consultation Night is something all the staff would like cancelled... especially as it's held on the same night as Bake Off. Even head teacher Ms Baron (Frances de la Tour) hates the occasion, although her hilarious description of what she'd rather do is too disgusting to repeat here.

However, PE teacher Mr Gunn (Philip Glenister) is anxious about it for a very personal reason. He believes he is the father of a boy he teaches at the school. "Oooh, it's better than an episode of Waterloo Road," squeaks the comely Miss Postern (Catherine Tate) when he confides in her. She's right - it's much, much better than that.

Radio Times review

Mr Church and Mr Gunn are locked in their ridiculous competition to win the affections of needy, passive-aggressive school siren Miss Postern. It's her birthday but no one cares, apart from the frenzied Church.

As the second series of David Walliams's school-set sitcom hits its stride, there are more daft gags, but Big School manages not to be sent for detention because of the great cast - Philip Glenister, Catherine Tate, Walliams himself - who throw everything into it.

Some of the jokes go on too long, including a laboured bit of business involving a hunky, blind new geography teacher, and the whole thing is often breathtakingly coarse (a running joke about gay sex, for instance). But Frances de la Tour as the lubricious head steals every scene and it's always good to see Steve Speirs doing his mournful Welsh thing, here as the useless caretaker.

As it returns for a second series, Big School really seems to have found its comedy feet. David Walliams' performance is still every bit as subtle as his cross-dressing "I'm a laydee" Emily was in Little Britain. That is to say, not at all.

But Big School is well enough written to survive his camp, asexual gurning and the dream cast add extra polish to an already shiny script.

In tonight's opener, music teacher Mr Martin (Daniel Rigby) is about to launch his pop career. (His single, written by David Arnold and Michael Price, sounds like an entirely credible X Factor winner's song.)

Mr Barber (Steve Speirs) has had to take a career change, PE teacher Mr Gunn (Philip Glenister) is now also teaching geography, and even the confident Miss Postern (Catherine Tate) finds herself at a crossroads in her career.

In one slightly depressing piece of casting, former EastEnder Cheryl Fergison replaces Julie T Wallace as the wordless lab assistant who has the hots for Walliams' Mr Church. Why depressing? Because making someone the butt of the joke just because they don't look like Angelina Jolie feels uncomfortably like bullying.

But the real reason for Big School's success is probably Frances de la Tour. Even when she's not actually on screen, just knowing that she's lurking somewhere in the building as vinegary headmistress Ms Baron is reassuring.

TV preview: Big School

David Walliams, Catherine Tate, Frances De La Tour, Joanna Scanlan, Philip Glenister and that bloke form the BT adverts. You can't fault the cast of Big School, which returns for a second run. The challenge is making something mainstream enought for primetime BBC One but still interesting enough so that the talented performers don't sleepwalk through it.

Viewers have taken to Big School (co-written by David Walliams and the Dawson brothers) in droves and they are rewarded by plenty of these crowd-pleasing moments (come on, who doesn't want to watch Philip Glenister drag David Walliams from a set of wall-bars?). But the real scene-stealer is Steve Speirs (he was Ricky Gervais's unwanted "friend" in Extras) as sentimental, self-dramatising Welsh geography teacher Mr Barber. He's prepared his class for an important exam: "I'm looking for the geography teachers of tomorrow." Or so he thinks.

Meanwhile, Greybridge School is transfixed by rumours that the chemistry department's prissy deputy head Mr Church has slept with thick French teacher Miss Postern. The rumour was started by Cro-Magnon gym teacher Mr Gunn, Miss Postern's other suitor and Mr Church's rival. In a big slapstick set-piece Church and Gunn (Walliams and Glenister) wrestle - literally - for Miss Postern's affections.

It really ought to have been a total winner, containing as it does - via cast members Philip Glenister, Frances De La Tour and Catherine Tate - the distilled magical essence of Life On Mars, Rising Damp and 'am I bovvered?'. But it feels tired, flabby, a bit obvious and not that funny - certainly when compared with its younger, zappier, rap-soundtracked, groovily-edited rival Bad Education.

And therein lies its problem, I think. Viewed in isolation, Big School would make a perfectly agreeable half-hour's entertainment, with the running gags about Mr Church's frustrated chemistry experiments and the quite-amusing 'Don't mention the war' scenario, whereby the staff fail to deal sensitively with the boy whose mother is having it off with a Maasai tribesman. Watch it after Bad Education, though, and suddenly it's as lame and embarrassing as watching your Dad trying to DJ.

Possibly thanks to its big-name cast - including David Walliams, Catherine Tate, Philip Glenister - Big School continues to have the feeling of a show that is a long way from being as funny as it should be. In fact, there's a rather unattractively retro, 1970s feel to tonight's episode, in which staff are instructed to behave sensitively towards a pupil called Josh: after an African holiday, his mum has run off with a Masai tribesman. Frances de la Tour as the headmistress remains the only bright spark in a class of underachievers.

The chemistry experiments that open each episode of Big School show how combinations of some fairly innocuous looking elements can produce unexpectedly spectacular results.

And the unlikely love triangle that throws David Walliams, Catherine Tate and Philip Glenister into a test tube is still delivering plenty of bangs for your buck.

The culmination of this week's episode finds the desperately uncool Mr Church and the not-as-cool-as-she-pretends-she-is French teacher Miss Postern perched cosily together on her sofa on a Saturday night watching Strictly.

"Has the one on the end got a wife?" Mr Church inquires.

Also this week, drug dealing has become a problem at Greybridge School - a chance for all the teaching staff to unite and tackle the problem in their usual, ill-informed way.

And that means another duet.