Update : 10 February 2013 – First trailer
BBC Two has posted this short trailer for the show.
Update : 13 February 2013 – Nicola does the Birdie Song?!
Ian Wylie just tweeted
Things I never thought I’d see on TV No 783: Nicola Walker doing The Birdie Song by The Tweets.
He then confirmed that this can be seen in episode 2 of Heading Out.
26 February can’t come soon enough!!!
BBC Media Pack
HERE is the BBC’s Media Pack for this show which includes interviews with four cast members. From the Q&A with Sue Perkins, she has this to say about Nicola
Justine is played by Nicola Walker who is one of my oldest friends. I’ve known her since I was 18. I now have to deal with the fact that not only is she my friend but suddenly I have to act with her; I had to raise my game considerably because I’ve always been overwhelmed by her talent. I wrote the part of Justine with her in mind and after the first read-through she went back to her husband and said ‘I don’t know how to play this part’ and her husband said ‘It’s you, you just don’t know that Justine is exactly how you are!’.
But joking aside we could all say that about each of ourselves, there is a very sober and serious side but there’s also a side to Nicola, as there is with me, that’s very childish and we just laugh and play. I wrote her part out of love, except Nicola’s very clever and the Justine is more of a simpleton!
Nicola was filming her part for this show during the tail end of the Curious Dog Incident’s run at the National Theatre. It must have been enormous fun for her, as an actress, to go from playing simpleton Justine during the day and then transition to the emotionally drenching part of Judi in the eveings!
Episode Preview Clips
Episode 1 (this is the NetBall clip – a slightly longer version than the clip which is available on BBC Two’s website)
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6
Episode Guides
Episode 1 : BBC / Radio Times | Episode 2 : BBC / Radio Times | Episode 3 : BBC / Radio Times | Episode 4 : BBC / Radio Times | Episode 5 : BBC / Radio Times | Episode 6 : BBC / Radio Times
Reviews
Episode 1
(in no particular order)
Radio and TV Times | Independent | the ArtsDesk | Daily Star | MSN UK | Guardian UK | Metro UK | Huffington Post UK | Herald Ireland | Broadcast UK (contains excerpts from four other reviews) | The Stage | Daily Mirror
From The Times UK (we’re reproducing the short review in full since you need a paid subscription to view articles from the Times online and we assume that some fans do not have this access)
Sue Perkins is immensely likeable. As a comedian, presenter, conductor and frequent guest on Just a Minute, she has always come across as cheerful, intelligent, quick-witted and funny. Like so many of the most successful television personalities, there doesn’t seem much of a gulf between her persona on and off the screen, and — perhaps not surprisingly — her new sitcom Heading Out has the distinct whiff of comic autobiography about it. In it, she plays a lesbian netball-playing vet who chats up women in the park by claiming to be an elf. She’s 40 years old. She doesn’t do eye contact. She agonises about her age, her commitment phobia and whether or not to have botox. Her eccentric circle of friends reckon she’s smug, intellectually insecure and messy — a person so scared of who she is that she doesn’t like people to know that she’s a lesbian or that she comes from Streatham. (“I’m not from Streatham.”) But on the plus side, she is hugely loveable and capable of gelding a tortoise with one hand. Heading Out is all about her attempts to find love and come to terms with who she is — and that means admitting to her parents that she doesn’t actually have a French boyfriend who sells prosthetic legs for a living. It’s an amiable comedy that will appeal to anyone with a soft spot for lesbian elves.
We are also reproducing an excerpt from the review in The Stage
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.
We already know from previous reviews of Nicola’s stage and TV projects that The Stage is a big Nicola fan. Whilst we’d agree that Nicola would do a fantastic job in any role she’s given, we don’t agree with The Stage‘s assessment of Sue’s acting skills. For someone who has not acted on screen before (and we don’t count being on panel and reality shows as “acting”), we thought that Sue did a wonderful job with that flirting scene in episode 1! And since this is only episode 1, there’s no reason to expect that Nicola will be wasted in the best friend’s role over the next 5 episodes.
Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4 | Episode 5 | Episode 6
Ratings
Episode 1
From Broadcast UK
Heading Out (BBC2) 10pm–10:30pm
1.84m (9.64%)The six part Red Production Company comedy, which follows a 40-year old woman who is scared to tell her parents she is gay, recorded 1.7m viewers on BBC2 and an additional 136,000 on BBC HD.
This was well above BBC2’s 12 month slot average of 1.1m (6%), according to overnight Barb figures supplied by Attentional.
The show broadly held its audience for the period it was on-air.
Episode 2
From various sources on Twitter, it would appear that ratings for Episode 2 dropped to around 700,000 views.
Purchase the DVD from Amazon UK
The DVD box set for this show is released on 8 April 2013 and is Region 2 and 4 PAL compatible. A 10 minute Behind the Scenes Featurette is available on the DVD and Nicola appears in a short interview about the show.
Turn the page and go to filming locations, press interviews available online, press articles gallery, Screencaps and Six Degrees.
I have just watched, in quick succession, Last Tango in Halifax followed by Heading Out and am astounded at the range of versatility (and brilliance) of Ms Walker: both serious angst and brilliantly comedic. Please, if you can, pass on to her my appreciation and thanks.
More and more work for Ms Walker, please.
Well, I’m just referring to the fact it breaks for a couple of weeks from 12-28 September – or at least according to the NT calendar listings!
I think it’s a good sign the sitcom’s lined up for BBC2 – less mainstream often equals better (imho)!
PS. if you’ve got a couple of young ones to take with you, why not take them to one of the pop-up workshops the NT’s running this year too…
A break of just two weeks is not long enough to film a new 6 episode comedy. They usually take one to two weeks to film one episode for a TV show (longer if a lot of special effects are involved), and that’s not counting the time spent on pre-production works, such as table read throughs :). I reckon Nicola will be gainfully employed at least till up to Christmas this year! And if there’s a series 2 for Last Tango in Halifax, then they might start filming that in the new year – no inside info, just wishing thinking aloud 😛 😀
Rest assured I wasn’t suggesting the entire sitcom would be filmed in 2 weeks – just remarking she’ll be transitioning from one to the other (and maybe doing both alongside – who knows!) I like your optimism on a 2nd series of Last Tango though 🙂
And then ‘segue’ from the sitcom filming back to the 2nd run of The Curious Incident! – a busy few months as you say! I bet they’ll have fun filming this though! Good catch!
There’s a second run of [i]The Curious Incident …[/i]??? Unlikely, IMHO, because once they’ve filmed the play as a NT Live event, they’ll just let that play in cinemas from time to time. I wouldn’t be disappointed by a second run, though, because I can then think about taking one or two younger members of the family to the play. 🙂