Little Miss Jocelyn

OK, I simply adore this new comedy sketch show by 3 Non Blondes star, Jocelyn Jee Esien. But first of all, I must admit that this show is an acquired taste. The less positive comments about it are understandable, considering the sketch material.

But for me, it is Esien's sheer versatility and wide-range of characters, that make this a winning formula. She becomes that character and adopts a whole new persona, in each sketch! My favourites include acid-tongued, man hating Gladys Kingston, Fiona the office employee who believes that no-one knows that she is black, Jiffy the busy-body traffic warden with her love for stopping ordinary people and lecturing them on various topics, and so on. Her facial expressions are just priceless, too.

You either love or hate it. I personally can't get enough of it.

I watched all the episodes one after the other on BBC 3 one night and i thought it was hilarious. Even though it isn't as funny as Catherine Tate or French and Saunders and any other leading English actresses, she really does do a variety of realistic characters.

One of my favourites has to be the teenagers on the bus, who talk about absolute crap, but it is hilarious. Another is the parking ticket women who seems to think she knows the "quain"(queen). She even has an argument on a real street rubbish collecting and it is hilarious. Another character she plays is a black posh women who seems to think if she speaks with a posh accent and dresses like she has just ages 50 billion years people won't realise she is black, is class.

I really would advise to watching this, its good to get a variety on comedy.

This show made me laugh at points but a lot of it just felt forced and contrived. One of the great things about Little Britain - another sketch show - is that it feels natural and the characters are so believable. Each character on this show feels so forced and overdone and you want to laugh because Jocelyn tries so hard, but you just can't laugh.

The Voodoo diet planner was somewhat funny the first time, but after that it's just repetitive.

The car-parking attendant is an example of one who tries so hard to pull laughs. She jumps out of glove compartments. She wears crayola makeup. Her uniform is obviously a handmade costume from the producers. She just appears as a cartoon! Others are too long, too contrived or just plain unfunny. What this show lacks is subtlety.

Another thing that annoys me is how Jocelyn is churning out the catchprases! She really wants t-shirts, coffee cups, mimics, songs and everything to come from this show and it's catchprases. "This is going to take a long time." "I'm calling mum, that ain't right."

I give it 5 because it's still pretty OK and there are funny bits but a lot of it isn't that great. I only watched the first episode and will give it another go tonight.

I'm disappointed thought because I was such a huge fan of 3 Non Blondes.

I really don't understand why so many people dislike this show. It certainly holds its own against all the other character based sketch shows that have appeared over the last few years.

I didn't like her previous show 3 Non Blondes & had low expectations. Admittedly, there are a few sketches that fail to hit the mark (especially in the first series), but the majority make me laugh out loud. With such a large variety of characters & ideas there will always be some that you won't like. However, the richness of 'Little Miss Jocelyn' stems from this variety. Characters such as the Nigerian Driving Instructor, the Toilet Attendant, the Disgusting Shop worker, Gladys Kingston the foul mouthed man hater, the Dietician / Witchdoctor, Tantrum Woman and the Traffic Warden are used in the context of sketches but also in the real world in a hidden camera show style. This works beautifully & shows just how versatile & inventive Jocelyn Jee Esien is. Her skill at portraying so many very different comic characters (Old women, teenagers, men etc) in a convincing manner is impressive & so is the attention to detail. The Bus Driver & Traffic Attendant are absolutely spot on in the way they behave & speak and they're worryingly close to the real people who do those jobs.

I love Gladys Kingston, the funeral chasing old ladies, the Umwopwopwopwops and the Toilet Attendant. Just give this show a chance. Don't avoid it just because a few people here hate it.

This is a perfect example of the BBC trying to get 'the ethnic vote', and failing miserably. There are lots and lots of extremely funny black comics working the UK today - Felix Dexter, for instance, has been criminally overlooked for many years and Gina Yashere, although hit and miss, is certainly ten times funnier than this tripe.

I've watched (forced myself) four episodes to try and give it as much of a chance as I could, but, aside from a couple of guilty laughs at the expense of the Nigerian parking attendant and bus driver, there is precious little here to merit even a first viewing, let alone a second.

It's clear that she is trying too hard to be funny but, whilst she may or may not be a good stand-up, the protagonist here most certainly isn't a sketch comic. Admittedly she isn't helped by the hackneyed 'fifteen year old drama students' scripts, but thinly veiled racism posing as 'laughing at ourselves' stopped being funny after the first series of Goodness Gracious Me - when the novelty value wore off.

Incidentally - why is it that, during an age when there is increasingly serious racism between black kids of African and Caribbean descent in our schools, a programme which, basically, is 25 minutes of p***-taking between the two cultures is not considered 'racism'?