Injection of animal magic
WHATEVER Sue Perkins does is always a pleasure, even if it is, as she once said, simply being paid by the BBC “for blabbering on random shows” or drooling over cakes in the Great British Bake Off.
Now, after too long in the universe of reality television and presenting, the comedian returns to her roots (originally doing sketch-comedy with Mel Giedroyc), as she writes and stars in this gentle but laugh-packed comedy piece.
Perkins plays Sara, a vet and a lesbian. It’s her 40th birthday and, although her career in healing animals is rattling along quite merrily and she can spay a tortoise with a single hand, her personal life is a mess. When her mum phones up with a birthday greeting, she finds herself pretending she’s in a relationship with a prosthetic limbs salesman, when really she’s got a trendy hippy girl still slumbering in her bed.
The joy of the show is that it seems rather real. Perkins has said it’s not a “political piece [in a sexual politics way] – it’s just saying we’re all the same”. She says she “forgot” to research being a vet for the show, but you wouldn’t know it, or care. And it’s the quirky details that really make you warm to Heading Out; like when Sara shuffles across her friend’s perfect floor and says she is just buffing it, or when she flirts in such a bumbling way with Shelley Conn, her romantic interest. There are also plenty of comic turns by Nicola Walker and Dominic Coleman (plus Dawn French and Mel Giedroyc to come), and, of course, the prerequisite dead cat. It is, after all, a show about a vet. The dead cat really had to be a star.