Radio Times review

It's "Black" Christmas Eve at the discount supermarket Valco: as well as bargains being snapped up by hordes of feral shoppers, there are new and familiar faces in the sitcom that attracts top-quality comic actors, then doesn't do quite enough with them. Gavin (Jason Watkins) has become a Scrooge-like hard man, denying his staff a party and prowling around for vulnerable team members he can corral into working on Christmas Day. Will the return of Julie (Jane Horrocks), the tender guidance of rival store manager Cheryl (Sarah Parish) or the arrival of mysterious head-office enforcer Frank (Richard Wilson) lead to a softening of his spirit?

It's nearly Christmas at Valco and fruit-recognition training is in full swing, while a poisonous spider is on the loose. In the second of the double bill, the supermarket's staff celebrate its birthday in 1960s fancy dress as the series bows out. There are some real gems in the ensemble cast, most notably Jason Watkins and Sarah Parish playing out Gavin's bittersweet romance with rival supermarket manager Cheryl in the store's freezer. Trollied is from the Stella school of comedy: not always hilarious, but gently watchable.

This is the start of Trollied's fifth series. It's a sitcom set in a fictional supermarket called Valco which has the slogan "SERVES YOU RIGHT!"

I'd never watched it before - Sky1's comedy rarely tempts me - so I was pleasantly surprised to see so many famous faces in it, including Jason Watkins whom I'd last seen in the brilliant ITV drama about Christopher Jefferies. He's joined by Sarah Parrish, Stephen Tompkinson and another actor, playing the store security guard, whom I recognised but just couldn't place till it suddenly hit me: he was in Bread. That's a blast from the past!

The episodes opens with bad news: a new supermarket is opening next door and it's "one of them dead cheap Yugoslavian places" whose name translates as, "we're all gonna lose our jobs."

It annoyed me that the checkout staff are all simpletons or overweight, whilst the middle-class management are impeccably groomed and tailored, but I had to shrug off thoughts of exploitation of the workers and remind myself it's a comedy - although there weren't many reminders of its comic status with jokes such as, "Can you tell me where I can find eggs?". "Chickens," comes the reply.

Radio Times review

Ian Fletcher, the BBC's head of values, knows how to set aflame the hearts of his female colleagues. In Twenty Twelve, as head of Olympic deliverance, he was the object of his secretary Sally's silent devotion.

Now he's taken the fancy of brutal Anna Rampton (Sarah Parish) and personable, sensible Lucy Freeman. Both women cast covetous glances at the hapless chap in the final episode of John Morton's knowing sitcom.

Ian's (Hugh Bonneville) well disposed to Lucy (Nina Sosanya) but there's little time for romance when a perfect storm of nonsense involving a BBC London weather man and a female presenter blows up and threatens to engulf the management team. It's all Siobhan's fault, of course.

Sarah Parish talks about W1A

You might think working on a spoof documentary about the BBC would be a bundle of laughs - but according to Sarah Parish, the mood on set at Twenty Twelve sequel W1A was more akin to a dentist's waiting room...

Radio Times review

Nobody, but nobody can burble the jargon like Siobhan. Here she is talking about the possibility of a new BBC logo, maybe one that makes it look more like an app? "You homescreen your brand takeaway right there in the logo. You're drinking from the firehose from the get-go. It's a no-brainer." Brilliant, isn't it? And as the redesign proceeds there's more absurdity from her and her "Ideation Architect".

Everywhere you look there are deft comedy moments: nice-but-dim Will has the taxing job of putting invitations in envelopes for his beloved Izzy. The controller of news has to apologise for an apology. And a nervous writer pitches a script to ice-cool Anna Rampton (Sarah Parish), but first he must sit on a ludicrous stool.

The makers of Twenty Twelve were lauded for their Olympics satire, but no one was likely to mistake it for a factual programme. The same can't be said for sure about their latest venture, W1A, which pokes fun at the BBC. The Sun reports that Sarah Parish, who plays an inept head of output at the Beeb, reckons the spoof drama may be so realistic viewers won't know that the whole thing is meant to be a joke. The series also features Hugh Bonneville, who will again play Ian Fletcher, with the character moving from the Olympic Legacy project to the BBC to help it deal with "recent findings". All sounds a bit familiar. Parish said: "I did think people might watch and, for 10 minutes, think it's a documentary." Fingers crossed for a cameo from John Humphrys.