Sue Johnston stars as Eileen, the widowed matriarch of a riotous Birkenhead family in Michael Wynne's new six-part comedy drama. We first encountered the Lewises in Lapland, a 75-minute Christmas special which was screened in 2011, when the newly fatherless clan travelled to the Arctic Circle and Eileen learned to live life to the full. But back home, things aren't so rosy and now Eileen has vanished and her daughter, Paula (Elizabeth Berrington), fearing the worst, organises a family search party.

Sue Johnston interview

Sue Johnston is back as Eileen Lewis, a role she first played in a 2011 Christmas comedy called Lapland.

Those disappointed that a 2011 Royle Family special failed to materialise will be heartened to learn that Barbara (Sue Johnston) has gone overboard with all the presents for 2012. "If you can't spoil your family at Christmas, when can you?" she asks, having spent a whole hour in Poundland. But not everyone is cosy and content: neighbour Joe has placed a lonely-hearts ad. It reads: "Vacant Lady Wanted." Who could resist such a charm offensive?

Sky Living comedy Gates gets the American treatment

Show that starred Joanna Page, Tom Ellis and Sue Johnston in the UK is to be re-imagined on NBC across the pond.

We arrive at the Gates, Sky Living's new sitcom about the parents and staff of a congenial city primary, and the 15-minute social minefield they're forced to navigate at the beginning and end of each school day. Gates had the potential to be a new Outnumbered, with its harried middle-class parents, and its ensemble's impeccable comedy pedigree: Sue Johnston (The Royle Family); Joanna Page (Gavin & Stacey); Tony Gardner (Lead Balloon; Fresh Meat).

In the first episode, builder and new parent Mark (Tom Ellis, him off Miranda) was cornered on the school run by two terrifying mums: a militantly mustard-keen Aussie who organises coffee mornings and salsa-cise evenings, and an uncomfortably tactile art therapist. The teacher (Johnston) is perpetually hung- over. The headmaster is barely out of short trousers himself, and eager to please Ofsted with his "School and Home Partnership Workshop Week" (aka Parents' Week). The only sane people in the school are the pupils.

I laughed out loud once - at the headmaster's bowing and scraping before a bemused Ofsted inspector - and smiled once or twice more. Gates hasn't quite decided whether it's a realist cringe comedy, or a semi-surrealist one. A lot of sitcom pilots disappoint, but they can improve with age. The second series of both the BBC's Episodes and Grandma's House, for example, have been received far more warmly than their first. Gates is still only half an idea, middlingly executed, but given time it might settle into something more watchable. Outnumbered, though, it ain't.

Yet another school-based sitcom, but this time the parents (Joanna Page and Tom Ellis) are the butt of the jokes. On the first day of school they're much more nervous than their daughter, knowing they must run the gauntlet of the school gates where predators prowl eager to ensnare them in endless coffee mornings, after-school activities and play-dates.

Before you can say "How do you do?" the new dad is fleeing from a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Aussie and a lonely housewife. Best of all is Sue Johnston as a hungover teacher who couldn't care less about the headmaster's harebrained schemes. Survivors of the school run will soon be chuckling in sympathy.

Gavin & Stacey's Joanna Page, Sue Johnston and Tom Ellis (better known as Miranda's love interest) star in a new comedy about the parents who meet daily to pick their kids up from school. Helen (Page) and Mark (Ellis) enrol their daughter in her new primary school, where they encounter the minefield of parental etiquette, volunteering for the PTA and school-gate flirtations. Support from Catherine Shepherd, Ella Kenion and Tony Gardner. Promises good things.

A promising start for a new comedy set around the daily drop-off and pick-up point at a primary school - a minefield of social politics. Mark (Tom Ellis) and Helen (Gavin & Stacey star Joanna Page) and their daughter Chloe (Mari Ann Bull) are new to the area and Helen warns Mark not to get involved with the other parents; "these gates are a jungle," she warns. But an unexperienced Mark proves defenceless as he is lured into hosting a post-school party and giving a presentation to the pupils. Sue Johnston shines as a swinging, single older teacher.

Sue Johnston lands Coronation Street role

Royle Family star Sue Johnston is to play Stella Price's mum Gloria in Coronation Street, producers have said.