'Dead Boss' like 'Mean Girls', say writers

Dead Boss writers Sharon Horgan and Holly Walsh have claimed that their new BBC Three show is more like Mean Girls than a "social commentary" on life in jail.

A strong cast doesn't conceal the fact that, on the evidence of the opening two episodes, this new comedy scripted by Holly Walsh and the usually reliable Sharon Horgan (above) needs to be funnier and darker. Horgan plays Helen, wrongly sent to prison for killing her boss. Nobody on the outside, including her hopeless lawyer (Geoff McGivern), seems able to help, while inside she has to contend with the malevolent governor (Jennifer Saunders). Future episodes promise star appearances by Caroline Quentin and Miranda Richardson.

Sharon Horgan co-writes (with Holly Walsh) and stars in a new comedy about a woman wrongly imprisoned for her boss's murder. It also stars Jennifer Saunders as the prison governor and Geoff McGivern as her shady solicitor. The first of two episodes tonight sees Helen (Horgan) sent down for 12 years after the boss of the tile warehouse she works at is found dead. In the second, she enters the prison quiz, in an attempt to shave five years off her sentence.

Sharon Horgan interview

Thursday sees the return of Sharon Horgan to BBC3. Fans of laugh-out-loud comedies will remember Horgan's last BBC3 comedy Pulling with great fondness, and now she is back with a brand new six-part comedy co-written with stand-up Holly Walsh, entitled Dead Boss.

Holly Walsh interview

Holly Walsh talks about her new sitcom starring Jennifer Saunders, Sharon Horgan's amazing garden shed and how she turned a nasty accident to her advantage.

The disappointment of the week had to be Dead Boss, BBC3's six-part comedy thriller with murder-mystery overtones starring Sharon Horgan, who co-wrote the show with Holly Walsh.

Horgan plays Helen, wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment within the forbidding walls of Broadmarsh Prison. And broad is the operative word here. The producers have clearly gone for big laughs - a laudable ambition - but the route they've taken is obvious and predictable. The quality of the jokes is erratic, to say the least, while the talented cast wastes its energies on stale stereotypes.

Horgan, the most deliciously subtle of performers, is left frantically mugging away for laughs, which is something of a crime in itself.

A brand new sitcom from Pulling's Sharon Horgan and stand-up comedienne Holly Walsh. Though it focuses on the (supposedly wrongful) imprisonment of Horgan's character Helen for the murder of her employer, it's a surprisingly light and innocent show (the second episode at 11pm centres around a jail quiz night) with some excellent performances - particularly from Jennifer Saunders as the prison's creepily-pleasant warden.

Returning to BBC3 four years after her critically-acclaimed sitcom Pulling was axed to make way for 17 more series' of Two Pints of Lager, Sharon Horgan recovers her form with Dead Boss, a satisfyingly silly prison-set sitcom co-written with comedian Holly Walsh.

Beginning with a double-bill, it stars Horgan as Helen, a woman wrongly sentenced to 12 years in the chokey for the murder of her boss. Her thwarted efforts to clear her name and survive within this madhouse form the spine of a likeable farce, which, as directed by The League of Gentlemen's Steve Bendelack, has a cartoonish quality vaguely redolent of that other (good) BBC3 sitcom, Ideal.

Merrily tweaking all the usual prison clichés, it's populated by the likes of a leering Top Dog - notorious for once paper-cutting an inmate to death with a copy of TV Quick - and Jennifer Saunders as a faux-mumsy Governess. In fact the cast is uniformly strong, with Geoffrey McGivern proving particularly amusing as Helen's hopeless lawyer.

It's no Porridge, but Dead Boss still succeeds as an enjoyable streak of assured nonsense.

The Dead Boss guide to TV prison

Writers Sharon Horgan and Holly Walsh take Hannah Verdier into the telly clinks that inspired their new BBC3 sitcom.

Sharon Horgan unlocks the lighter side of the slammer

Funny woman Sharon Horgan is back on screens in a new self penned comedy about life inside.