Caroline Aherne is fused with Bet Lynch for the return of Morgan’s astoundingly odd sitcom that doesn’t believe in character development
There is an intern inside Diane Morgan’s beehive. The person, after being shrunk to fit, operates a tiny control panel to create Morgan’s facial expressions. The only problem is that they are not very good at it. Perhaps the hairspray Morgan wears for her role in Mandy (BBC Two) has clouded the intern’s brain. They keep pulling on the lever that twitches her pursed lips into a lop-sided smirk, or using the rotator ball to make her Marty Feldman-like eyes swivel in a parody of human sarcasm.
Or at least, this is my explanation for why Morgan’s performance as the titular mardy, functionally unemployable Lancastrian tends towards the two-dimensional. It not only accounts for why Mandy is obsessively focused on keeping her hairdo in place. It also explains why there is not the remotest hint that Mandy’s character will develop.
