Can you keep the secret? Review – Dawn French looks like the wild vicar of Dibley in this charming sitcom | television

DIbi Findon is a force to be reckoned with. Fast-walking, recently widowed in the community, and mother of one (the easily overpowered Harry), Dawn French is played with a mixture of Dibley’s indefatigable energy, with a hint of the scintillating brutality that accompanied her best work in the French and Saunders days. Debbie is the driving force in Simon Mayhew Archer’s debut sitcom Can You Keep a Secret? – And this secret is that Debbie’s husband, William, was mistakenly declared dead after taking too much Parkinson’s medication, by a germaphobic doctor who did not want to go near the body. Debbie convinced William to stay “dead” in order to pay out the life insurance payout, which she now had in cash, in a large suitcase under the stairs.

You wonder: What kind of husband can be persuaded to do such a thing? But then William turns out to be played by Mark Heap, and anything becomes possible. William had always been like a hermit and now he was simply being imposed on. “The cool thing about you is that you’ve probably been dead for 68 years,” Debbie says. And when he starts longing for occasional trips to the stores, you’re confused. “What do you have to miss then? Laser mission?”

Harry (Craig Roberts), who has been deeply grieving for his late father, is traumatized by the deception and criminality surrounding him. Not least because his wife, Neha (Mandip Gill), is a police officer (although it is Bigfish who spends most of his time, a local man with a penchant for sticking petrol nozzles up his ass), and Harry can neither safely tell her the truth nor comfortably live with a lie.

However, the money is at his fingertips and it buys his silence for a while. The script is careful to keep us on the Fendons’ side, suggesting that Debbie and William are denied payment after his diagnosis and that the money is for ordinary expenses, not for living in the lap of luxury. They followed all the rules, Debbie says at one point, and what made them do that? “A dodgy kettle and a garden full of fox droppings.”

There is an underlying melancholy – which sometimes turns to bitterness – in Can You Keep a Secret? That anyone who grew up on traditional British sitcoms will recognize and love. (Simon Mayhew-Archer has a family figure in the genre: his father, Paul, co-wrote “The Vicar of Dibley” with Richard Curtis.) This gloom carries us over to more silly jokes (“You know how I feel about the banks after what they did to Noel Edmonds,” “You run this house like Guantanamo Bay. But with less humanity. Rumsfeld!”) and tired set pieces: the strange, painful speech Dippy delivers to her face. The husband’s memorial service, William hiding in the closet when the Widows’ Club comes and has to wait for the narcoleptic member to fall asleep before running away, etc.

So, Harry pays the rent and treats himself to a jet washer that I sure hope Pigfish doesn’t hear about, but his guilt grows. Also adding to the narrative tension are the blackmail letters that begin to arrive. Someone else knows that William is alive but will keep the secret for only £20,000.

There are acts of disguise, fear of jumping, chocolate addiction, a weak bladder, and the phrase “you big idiot” as a recurring refrain. We’re not breaking any new ground here. But this is not always necessary; It would be exhausting if it were. Sometimes, doing the tried and tested things well is enough, and together French and Mayhew Archer deliver. Heap’s inimitable presence is underutilized, and William seems to come from a slightly different show, but Roberts and Gale do a good job.

Can you keep the secret? It has enough charm, wit, and warmth to act as a soothing balm rather than a fun treat. Even though farce is your thing, you’ll probably find yourself leaning more towards the latter and having a lot of fun. Happy New Year 2026.