The Stage

TV review

Published Monday 15 March 2010 at 12:10 by Harry Venning

The Gemma Factor is a new sitcom about an aspiring actress/model/presenter whose irrepressible optimism remains undiminished despite the combined drawbacks of her having no discernible talents whatsoever, living in a small Yorkshire village where the nearest bright lights are Halifax, and signing with an agent who has a criminal conviction for sex trafficking.

Given its showbusiness theme, The Gemma Factor automatically loses points for its total absence of any verbal or visual references to The Stage newspaper. Hopefully this appalling omission will be rectified in future episodes.

Apart from that, The Gemma Factor was great - funny, fresh and charming. The last of these attributes is almost impossible to pull off, so congratulations to all involved.

What makes The Gemma Factor’s achievements all the more remarkable is how perilously close it skates to the potentially appalling. If the show’s comedy calibrations were just a few degrees out Gemma’s personality would be irritating and imbecilic rather than sweet and naive, with her friends and family coming over as clumsy cliches, not cuddly and colourful. As it is I was totally seduced, even without the picture postcard shots of West Yorkshire at its sunniest and greenest.

Some of the gags do strain to be funny, and the simpleton policeman is a caricature too many, but otherwise Tony Pitts’ script is spot-on. And in Anna Gilthorpe the show has found an authentic star to play the delusional wannabe of the title.

Imagine A Question Of Sport without the sports questions, combined with They Think It’s All Over without the comedy and what you get is Sky 1’s A League of Their Own.

Apparently the programme is available in high definition, although what it looks like really is the least of its problems.

The show desperately struggles to fill its allotted hour, despite the best efforts of chairman James Corden and team captains Jamie Redknapp and Andrew Flintoff. They really do work hard for their money, with Flintoff proving surprisingly witty and charming.

But the format doesn’t do anybody any favours, particularly the overworked scriptwriters who are expected to pour comedy into the yawning chasms apparent in the dull, unimaginative and painfully protracted format. Working out which of three sporting lookalikes enjoyed the most success took the teams all of 15 minutes.

There were some very fine gags but nowhere near enough of them. That the whole enterprise was shot through with tedious blokeyness, accompanied by the inevitable whiff of homophobia - the default setting for the terminally unfunny - just made it all the more agonising.

Sidekick Stories was an entertaining, if hardly exhaustive, exploration of the supporting character on screen and on stage, from Falstaff, through Dr Watson, past Debbie McGee and finishing with Matthew Corbett who, older readers will recall, had a large hand in Sooty’s later career.

Contributors included Andrew Sachs, still clearly enamoured with Fawlty Towers’ Manuel, Edward Hardwicke discussing the huge array of non-verbal responses required to play Watson to Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes, and Elizabeth Sladen who expressed little affection, but some residual sidekick resentment, for her little metal co-star of K9 And Company.

How, Sladen was asked, did the legless robot canine get up onto the wall for the K9 And Company opening credits? “Somebody probably kicked it up the arse,” was Sladen’s reply.

• Hear actress Anna Gilthorpe from The Gemma Factor on The Stage podcast. thestage.co.uk/podcasts

The Gemma Factor BBC 3, Tuesday, March 9, 10.30pm

A League of Their Own Sky 1, Thursday, March 11, 9pm

Sidekick Stories BBC4, Tuesday, March 9, 9pm