Pippa Haywood

In Green Wing (2004), Joanna Clore makes human resources a doubtful place to take a problem. Pippa Haywood plays the hot-tempered HR director with enough ordinary workplace irritation to keep her recognisable amid the hospital’s absurdity. Alongside Olivia Colman’s Harriet Schulenburg, she helps the place feel populated by people with distinct ways of getting on one another’s nerves. We laughed at the petty exasperation: Haywood makes having to see the same colleagues again feel like sufficient provocation. She does not need every appearance to become the largest performance in the scene.

The Brittas Empire (1991–1997) had already brought her prominence as the long-suffering Helen Brittas. The difference between Helen and the hot-tempered Joanna suggests how useful frustration has been to her comedy. She can play the woman putting up with other people or the woman other people must put up with. What we particularly value in Green Wing is that her willingness to look foolish does not depend on crowding out the other performers.

The hour-long format is less helpful. Green Wing sometimes carries on being silly after the joke has done its work, and even this ensemble cannot make every extension worthwhile. Haywood’s contribution matters because Joanna still suggests somebody with a working day to endure, giving us something to recognise when the hospital comedy gets carried away. The programme benefits from that ordinary annoyance; without it, the succession of outrageous behaviour would become tiring much sooner.

Her later television work includes Scott & Bailey (2012–2016) and Lorraine Craddock in Bodyguard (2018). Our enthusiasm for the latter rests chiefly with Richard Madden and Keeley Hawes, rather than with Haywood’s supporting role. Jed Mercurio keeps the suspense tight, though the accumulating complications ask for indulgence. For Haywood herself, start with Green Wing, provided an hour of hospital silliness sounds like an evening well spent.