TV review: Up The Women

Jessica Hynes was the 'other' funny woman in Olympics comedy Twenty Twelve. The one who was nominated for a Bafta for her deliciously dim comedy turn, only to be pipped by her own co-star, the all-conquering Olivia Colman.

This time, Hynes is the star of the show both behind the camera, and in front of it, having written and taken the lead role in this deliberately quaint comedy, filmed in front of a live studio audience, which made its debut on BBC4.

With the end of the Shameless era, and a dearth of old fashioned sitcom stars, this was a definite throwback to the days when the likes of Dad's Army, and It Ain't Half Hot Mum ruled the roost.

Or, indeed, the classic episode of Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?, where the guys are desperately trying to avoid hearing the football score, which preceded this new offering on the BBC4 schedule.

All the action in the first episode of this three-parter was set in the church hall, where the Banbury Intricate Craft Circle was meeting in 1910, in the days before women were entitled to vote, and when it really did take more than one man to change a lightbulb because the technology was so mysterious and new.

Margaret (Hynes), having visited London and stumbled upon a rally by the Women's Suffrage movement, decides the institute should be renamed 'The Banbury Intricate Craft Circle Politely Request Women's Suffrage' and puts forward a motion to the committee.

But she faces strong opposition from the group's prickly, uppity leader Helen (the brilliant Rebecca Front from political satire The Thick Of It) who thinks women's rights are unnecessary: "What on earth do women need a vote for?" she says. "My husband votes for who I tell him to vote for. What could be a better system than that?" Battle lines between these two battleaxes are drawn.

This is Hynes' first full-series sitcom since Spaced, and it could hardly be more different: it's old-fashioned and stagey, with a band of carefully characterised misfits blissfully unaware they are playing their part in serious events of global significance.

The cast is top notch, particularly Front who wastes no time in creating a pantomime villain of a character we all love to hate; the archetypal spoilt brat.

Hynes plays her forward-thinker as a frustrated nerd, like Coronation Street's eccentric spinster Mary Taylor. Her face is permanently at war, as her patience wrestles with the urgent desire to tell people around her what complete idiots they are being.

The performances of all the leading ladies are game, their impeccable comic timing draining every last drop from the decent script, which never takes its ladies out of the church hall, or the adjoining kitchen, but arms them with some fine one-liners.

But the rather subtle satire gently nibbles at the audience, rather than taking a great big juicy bite.

It's warm, gentle stuff, perhaps lacking a little polish and a big Only Fools and Horses-style comic set-piece, and you're more likely to smile politely than to find yourself belly laughing out of control.

Nevertheless, there is undoubted potential in this quintessentially British way of putting an amusing spin on a deadly serious political and social issue, not to mention reminding us that much of the silly sexism of the early 20th century is still with us, 100 years on.

Britain has indeed got talent. Sometimes, though, you have to channel flick to find it.

Carl Jones