Miranda: many hapless returns - Telegraph Miranda says: "I've put a bit of pressure on myself for episodes one and two, because I know there'll be new people watching it, so I'm trying to grab their interest. But your insecurity makes you think, 'Oh, probably no one will watch it, they'll be bored of me by then."" That doesn't seem likely. Hodge sees the show's success as linked to a central character who "represents everybody who's ever had doubts about how they fit in to the social norm. There are kids of eight, nine, 10 who look at Miranda and say, 'That's how I feel at school," and people of 90 who think, 'Gosh I've felt like that all my life." It's something that goes very deep. Language is perhaps the most underrated part of the show's humour. Hart has a Pythonesque ear for what makes a word ticklish. "Posh name alert," she'll say, turning to camera to announce a frightful new character: "Clemency Twisterton Ott." It reaches its apotheosis in the speech of Phillips's "spiffulent" PR girl Tilly. "Marvellismus," she'll purr, or in one address to Miranda: "You have majorly let yourself go - slackeroni cheese!" Phillips, who like Hart has a boarding-school background, admits that she was "a late adopter" of the show's humour. I sort of felt like lots of this is old jokes. But now I think it's more sophisticated than that. It's just joyous. Miranda and Stevie... what would you call it? Womance. The female equivalent of bromance. It's a really beautiful, hilarious, good fun friendship. You know, sticking with each other through thick and thin, making each other laugh. It's a real portrait of friendship and intimacy with no darkness. I think that's where its power really is. The show is also, famously, exactly as Hart wants it. Tom Ellis says: "She has this character she calls Anal McPartlin. After we've gone through rehearsal after rehearsal and we're distilling it down to how it's going to be on the day of filming, there will be minuscule details we might have brushed over, and Miranda will just have a quiet word with you and say, 'Little Anal McPartlin point for you: When you say this could you just say it with this emphasis on that? And you'll go, 'OK, thanks Anal. He'll just appear and it's not necessarily only on the Friday before filming any more - Anal McPartlin's there on a Sunday now too. So is Miranda a bit of a diva? "Not even remotely," says Phillips. She's dreamt of this show since she was nine, she's written it, she's employed the director, she's actually had a say in who the producer is, she's cast it, she edits it, she's in every single scene, she chooses and employs the other writers. Is that diva-ish? Someone like Armando Iannucci [who Phillips worked with on I'm Alan Partridge], they're not actually that dissimilar. Armando is very cerebral and satirical and Miranda's much more clownish but if Armando were to say, 'No, no, it can't be like that it's got to be like this," nobody would say, he's a bit of a diva. Miranda could quote you every line of everything Eric Morecambe has ever done, has watched every single Hancock's Half Hour. She has idolised and hero-worshipped Jennifer Saunders like no one else. And she's just got a very clear idea of what she wants to do. To those who find Hart's humour too slapstick, too obvious, the effect can be infuriating. Even Sarah Hadland had early doubts. I remember thinking, 'Is this going to work, really, me being pushed off a stool? Is that funny? Then we filmed the first episode in front of a studio audience and the response was quite shocking. "People often say to me the studio audience is canned laughter and you want to go, 'Oh my god, we have to literally do it three times to get less laughter because the first time we do it, people go mental." " "I think it's just funny," says Patricia Hodge, simply. "One or two of my best friends have said in no uncertain terms they don't like it, and I've just said, 'That's fine, if you don't get it, you don't get it, but don't try to convince me, because actually I think otherwise - or I wouldn't be doing it."" Miranda is on BBC One at 9pm on Boxing Day; Hart also stars in Call the Midwife on BBC One at 7.30pm on Christmas Day