Camille Coduri

As Peggy in Big Boys (2022), Camille Coduri makes a mother’s affection feel ordinary and dependable. We warmed to her because she gives that care some weight in a comedy chiefly concerned with friendship between young men. Warm, outspoken women recur in her work, and her comic timing keeps the familiarity from becoming dull.

The early film comedies gave her room for that timing: she played Faith alongside Eric Idle and Robbie Coltrane in Nuns on the Run (1990), then Miranda in King Ralph (1991). Jackie Tyler in the revived Doctor Who (2005–2010) made her a familiar television face. The subsequent emphasis on British comedy took her through Him & Her (2010–2013) and King Gary (2018–2021). The move towards recurring sitcom parts makes good use of an actor whose appeal depends so much on recognising the everyday affection and vulnerability in the women she plays.

Jack Rooke’s Big Boys is the work we would recommend first, with a reservation about the writing. The friendship between Dylan Llewellyn and Jon Pointing’s characters earns its tenderness, but the series can be so eager to reassure that it softens its own jokes. Coduri’s warmth suits Rooke’s comedy, though the comfort of her presence cannot make every sentimental moment work. As Peggy, a central maternal figure across three series, she has a part that makes sustained use of that warmth, and gives us good reason to value a skill that can look deceptively simple.

There is a limit to what we should infer from that consistency. Her reputation rests heavily on warm, working-class women and mothers, which is not evidence that she could do nothing else. We would welcome a part that asked for something less immediately likeable without discarding her comic timing. Start with Big Boys, and allow for a comedy whose writing sometimes works too hard to reassure.