Victoria Wood is a talented comedy actor, writer, and singer who has built a national reputation following a string of self-written TV plays, films, and sketch shows. Born in 1953 in Lancashire, in northern England, she first had small-screen exposure on the TV talent search show New Faces, where she sang comedy songs of her own composition. Accompanying herself on the piano, she scored heavily with viewing audiences with her jaunty tunes, which often belied her sharp, poignant lyrics. Her regular themes of unrequited love, tedium, mismatched couples, and suburban living, as well as her ability to find humor in the minutiae of modern life, stood her in good stead when she moved into writing plays for the stage and later for television.

     Talent, her first play adapted for television (Granada, August 5. 1979). reunited her with Julie Walters, whom she had met while studying at Manchester Polytechnic. Their partnership would launch both their careers. Tal­ ent dealt with a mismatched couple: the ambitious would-be cabaret singer Julie Stephens  (Walters)  and the eternally sniffing Maureen. her plump.  dull.  but a loyal friend (played by Wood), who had accompanied Julie to a talent contest. The bittersweet comedy explored themes of desperation, dashed hopes, lost ambition and hopeless romances. The fact that Talent managed to be both funny and truthful demonstrated Wood's skill as a writer and the pair's acting ability. A sequel, Nearly a Happy Ending  (Granada.  June  1, 1980), appeared the following year. This time the couple were going out for a night on the town, pausing en route at a slimming club. Wood was then quite portly, and occasionally her material dealt with what being overweight meant to oneself and others. Later in her career, she slimmed down considerably.

     Following Nearly a Happy Ending, Wood and Walters appeared in a one-off special, Wood and Walters: Two Creatures Great and Small (Granada, January 1, 1981), which led to the series Wood and Walters (Granada, 1982). It was the series Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV (BBC), however, that truly established Wood as a major TV star. A sketch show introduced by a stand-up routine from Wood, the program also featured a musical interlude. Julie Walters. Patricia Rout­ledge. Susie Blake. Duncan Preston, and Celia Imrie provided strong support. and one favorite section of the show was "Acorn Antiques," a spoof of cheaply made soap operas.

     As Walters's film career blossomed. Wood's comedic talent continued to mature, and by the end of the 1980s she was a big draw on the live circuit. Her stand-up routine relied on observational humor as she drew laughs from finding the idiosyncrasies of normal modem life. She followed a long line of (male) northern comedians with her style of taking her storylines into surreal areas. as well as her character inventions, especially the gormless Maureen. On television she remained determined to try something new and not merely revamp winning ideas. To this end, she wrote and starred in a number of half-hour comedy playlets under the generic title Victoria Wood (BBC, 1989), her first series not to attract universal acclaim. She also appeared in a number of solo stand-up shows, and in a one-off spoof of early-morning television news magazine programs, Victoria Wood's All Day Breakfast (BBC, December 31, 1992).

     The feature-length TV film Pat and Margaret (BBC. September 11, 1994). Wood's most ambitious project to date. was her most accomplished reworking of her mismatched couple theme. In this context. Pat (Julie Walters) was a successful English actor in a hit U.S. soap (a la Joan Collins), who was reunited with her sister Margaret (Wood) on a TV chat show. The pair had not been in touch for 27 years. and neither was happy about the meeting. Once again, bittersweet themes of escape and despair were explored; once again, despite this tone, Wood's comedic ability triumphed.

     After  Pat and  Margaret, Wood  returned  to live per­formance, and many of her subsequent TV appearances have been recordings of her live acts. She returned to the sketch show format for seasonal specials before turning to that hardest of genres, the sitcom. Anticipation was high when it was announced that Wood was working on a sitcom, as the genre had been laboring at the time in the United Kingdom, and viewers and professionals alike thought that Wood might have the magic touch sadly missing elsewhere, dinnerladies (BBC, 1998-2000) was set in the works canteen of a north-of-England firm and was full of the sort of well-drawn, earthy characters that inhabited much of Wood's work. The program provided another memorable role for Wood's long-term sparring partner Walters, here playing Wood's character's mad mother. Initially, the reaction to dinnerladies was somewhat muted. It did not seem to live up to the great expectations, but the number of viewers was consistently high. With the second series. however. it was as if everybody suddenly "got" the idea, and the show soared to stratospheric viewing figures and attracted critical kudos. Wood said from the start there would only be two series of dinnerladies, and she was as good as her word, neatly rounding up all the loose ends in the final couple of episodes. She confessed that the sitcoms were the hardest writing she had ever attempted, but once again she had risen to the challenge.