Sue Perkins

Heading Out (Tuesday, BBC Two), written by and starring Sue Perkins, was as delightful as it was unexpected. The Sue Perkins persona that is familiar from comedy quiz shows is sharp and confident, whereas the character she plays in this - a vet specialising in cats and dogs who is hopeless at making eye contact, and finds it impossible to come out to her domineering mother (Harriet Walter) - is shy, awkward and wistful. "I feel shame all the time," she said on the subject of being in the closet. "It's like ivy creeping round me."

There were funny lines, too: "People think vets spend all their time with their fist up an arse, but that's only 95 per cent of the job." And to her girlfriend: "Remember that night you made me go cross-eyed? I'm quite keen to repeat that." But mostly this was the comedy of embarrassment and self-deprecation.

Most successful British sitcoms are variations on the same few recurring themes, such as generational conflict (Steptoe and Son, Ab Fab), the cunning underdog taking on the world (Porridge, Blackadder), or dysfunctional friendship (Peep Show, The Likely Lads), but this theme, coming out to your parents, seemed fresh to me.

In episode one, her straight best friend (a nice twist on the Gay Best Friend you always find in romcoms) attempted an intervention, to chivvy her along. Whether this conceit can be sustained for five more episodes remains to be seen, but already I like the characters enough to want to find out.

Sue Perkins' Heading Out is a right-on write-off

The path­etic series asks us to accept that a sophisticated 40-year-old vet is too terrified to tell her parents she's a lesbian.

Radio Times review

The central character of Heading Out was Sara, a 40-year-old vet, afraid of commitment and very afraid of telling her parents she is gay. Except it wasn't Sara up there, it was Sue Perkins. The wry rhythms, the crafted wit tempered by stuttering diffidence, the coy friendliness twinkling through that protective fringe: Sue Perkins.

So you might say, well, that doesn't work. We don't believe it's Sara. Unlike Grandma's House or Seinfeld or Ellen, the star isn't playing someone with their own name. Perkins isn't meant to be herself, but she inescapably is because we know her too well, in a way most actors cannily never allow.

The solution, in theory: cast someone else. But this wasn't an option, partly because Sara was totally Perkins in script as well as performance, but also because such a thin alter ego let our affection transfer easily. You like Sue Perkins? (Yes.) Then you'll like her playing a woman who looks and sounds the same.

Lose her presence and you'd lose the show's considerable charm, since the supporting cast were mostly struggling as caricatured oddballs: Dominic Coleman as a neat freak, Joanna Scanlan as a bellowy, hockey-sticks life coach hired by Sara's friends to help her come out fully, Mark Heap very Mark Heapy in a bit part as an officious pet-crematorium manager.

Nothing felt real, particularly the digression when Sara played netball and the opposition performed a fearsome dance routine before the game. "It seems to be some sort of inner-city, asthmatic Haka," said Sara, exactly as Perkins would in a documentary or panel show.

The Sara/Sue thing can't sustain Heading Out for long. Sara needs to stand on her own, even if it's through Perkins revealing parts of her own character that the fans haven't seen before, and the dialogue needs to sound a lot less like the carefully written words of a presenter. So it was pleasing to see a glint of this in episode one, when Sara met a potential love interest (Shelley Conn) in the park and ineptly chatted her up.

Viewers nervous about this being a "lesbian sitcom" were probably waiting for one of them to announce that they were gay, but nobody needed to because the writing and acting were nuanced and true. Sara and Sue were both out of their comfort zone - and rising to the challenge.

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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.

I'm sure that her agent might see things differently, but I've rather felt that Sue Perkins hadn't been doing herself any favours by positioning herself as the female Stephen Fry. Quite apart from it being annoying to find her popping up on TV three or four times a week on any show that asked, it seemed like a dilution of a genuine talent. So it's a relief to find her back on form and returning to her core business in her new sitcom, Heading Out (BBC2), in which she plays a gay vet who is about to turn 40 and is terrified of coming out to her parents.

There were a few rather flabby moments in the middle - almost as if Perkins had lost her nerve and thought middle England couldn't stomach a lesbian sitcom without a Benny Hill-style netball scene along with a crap 70s muzak soundtrack - but the start and the end were sharp and often extremely funny. If Perkins can keep the gags coming then this sitcom definitely has legs. More than can be said for Mosley, the dead cat, who came dangerously close to stealing the show.

Sue Perkins debuted her brand new comedy Heading Out, looking at the travails of lesbian vet Sara, dealing with the onset of her 40th birthday, a new girl on the sofa, a dead cat... and the small matter of not being out to her parents.

The humour was swift-moving enough, with Sara inventing an absent salesman boyfriend for the benefit of the furrowed-brow parents. Not just any old absent salesman, but a French one, who sold prosthetic legs... of course.

As the writer on this too, Perkins packed it all in... ruminations with her cleanliness-obsessed best friend, her dealings with the feline crematorium manager, a disastrous netball match, a sweet meet-cute in the park with an errant dog owner, an equally disastrous surprise party - attended by not one but two potential girlfriends, as well as the aforementioned dead cat.

I had fears that the ever-likeable Perkins, like Simon Amstell in his Grandma's House, would be too familiar a face for us to lose ourselves sufficiently in this suburban caper. But her warm persona transferred robustly to the drama, which was set up perfectly for next week's therapy session with netball soldier turned life coach Toria (The Thick of It's Joanna Scanlan). In a word: Very promising (okay, two then).

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