Little Miss Jocelyn

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.

After succumbing to the ram-it-down-your-throat hype campaign for this show, I thought I'd give it a whirl after tonight's episode of "Never Mind The Buzzcocks" had faded off the screen. And I can honestly say that instead of sitting on my couch with an expression of bemused disgust on my face for thirty minutes, I wish I had simply stood up and head-butted the wall until my face bled.

This is quite simply the worst programme I have ever seen masquerading as television comedy. Ever. Including that god awful one with Jasper Carrot where his kid's in a wheelchair or something. Watching "Little Miss Jocelyn" is like being hit in the face with a massive fish with the word "stupid" carved into its flank.

It beggars belief how such a show even got commissioned, let alone made it past BBC executives, producers, script meetings, rewrites and all of the normal processes every TV show goes through, only to end up as this steaming pile of pig's offal. The only conclusion I can draw is that those in charge of our entertainment industry - get ready for the irony - really don't have the first clue about entertainment.

But hey, I could sit here and bitch all day. let's go through the show. I watched. She did a cheap, "Last Of The Summer Wine"-esquire wheelchair out of control sketch. The audience whooped. I was silent but carried on watching. She dressed as a man in a fat suit. The audience howled. I was silent and carried on watching. She screamed repeatedly like a distressed boar for the entire duration of a sketch. The audience loved it, seemingly unaware of the Stupid Fish continuing its terrific facial barrage. Televisual root canal work. I carried on watching. A sketch with absolutely no direction - which appeared to be about some fitness fanatics or something - meandered on for about ten minutes. The audience seemed to like this as well, but by that time there was no doubt in my mind that they were being held at gunpoint. A small whimper escaped as I realised I had lost the use of my legs.

I implore anyone who hasn't seen this show to give it a watch. You'll see just how bad television comedy can be. And a note to the BBC - There are tonnes of perfectly talented ethnic minority comedians out there. Don't give a show to the first one who comes along just to fill your quota.

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 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'?