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Here We Go: Gavin and Stacey’s Alison Steadman dumps the iPad for a bit of owl spotting

© BBCAlison Steadman.
Alison Steadman.

Alison Steadman is playing a loving granny from Liverpool with her new role in big-hearted sitcom Here We Go.

The series follows 2020’s popular one-off pilot episode and follows the highs and lows of Steadman’s character Sue Jessop and her family as they navigate a combination of life’s everyday challenges – changing careers, keeping the romance alive within a marriage, adopting a healthier lifestyle, kidnapping a dog, destroying a swimming pool and sabotaging a wedding.

The role is close to home for Steadman, what with being a Scouse granny herself.

“When I said I was interested I got asked if I would play it as a woman from Liverpool, and I am from there originally, and I love my home city but I’ve never played many Liverpool parts!” she said. “I think Shirley Valentine is possibly the only one I’ve ever done so I thought, ‘Oh, that’d be nice, it would be great to do’.

“I have one little grandson who’s four and a half, I just love him to bits. He makes me laugh all the time because he is so funny, the things he comes out with, he sometimes talks like a teenager.

“They grow up so quickly now with all the iPads and television. We didn’t have a television in my house until I was seven and we didn’t have a phone till I was 15.

“You look back and you think, ‘Oh my God’, but of course it meant that we had other things to be interested in and sometimes I think kids miss out on wildlife and gardens and looking for insects and things, because they’ve got so much fun to have on iPads!”

The series is filmed from the perspective of youngest son Sam, and the style of the show was quite unlike anything Steadman, star of Gavin And Stacey, had seen before.

“That took a bit of getting used to,” she said. “You’re taught never to look at the camera lens and never let your eye catch the lens and suddenly we were being told we should talk to the camera, talk to the lens. Oh, my God, it did take a little bit of time before I got comfortable with that.”

Sue has seeing an owl and taking acid on her bucket list; not all of these are ambitions Steadman shares.

“Certainly not taking acid, that’s for sure,” she laughed. “Seeing an owl… I love wildlife and I’m always hoping that I’ll see this creature or that creature. There is a list of wildlife, a list of creatures that I would like to see.

“It’s sometimes quite difficult to see a certain type of bird, we very rarely see an owl where I live, yet we have the woods and lots of trees and things and it just makes me sad that, years ago, there was much more wildlife around than there is now.”


Here We Go, BBC1, Friday, 8.30pm