Meet Sue Johnston's New Family!

Much-loved actress Sue Johnston is about to star in a new BBC1 comedy drama – and we can’t wait

- Jenny Cripps

When casting directors were looking for an actress to play the matriarch in Age Before Beauty, Sue must have been top of the list.

Famous for playing working-class northern mums, there’s simply no actress who is better at it. In the series – a six-parter set in Manchester written by Debbie Horsfield – who also penned Cutting It, Making Out and adapted the Poldark novels for TV – Sue plays Ivy-Rae, the mother of four daughters with whom she works in the failing family beauty salon.

She specialises in spray tans and, if Debbie’s previous work-placed dramas are anything to go by, the character is bound to have some cracking lines gifted to her. Speaking about the role earlier this year, Sue said: “My character is the matriarch, but she’s also a woman in her own right. She does Northern Soul dancing and enters a competition. I had to learn the moves and all the extras were fantastic dancers, so it was a wonderful experience. There wasn’t anything ‘old lady’ about the character and she was up for everything, which I loved.”

The BBC describes the comedy drama as ‘an exploration of youth, age, instant gratification and long-term relationships set within the beauty industry. At its heart is an unconventional family rife with sibling rivalries and unconventional parenting through the generations’.