Miranda

- Season 3

(2013)

Due to Miranda's financial mismanagement - and reliance on selling boxloads of maracas - the joke shop is due for repossession. She gets a job as a temp but does not fit in and is determined to reclaim her shop though bank manager Dick Twist is unimpressed by her business plan and refuses a loan. Penny agrees to help out if Miranda attends an Eaters Anonymous group, which she does, but the visit ends in disaster and Dick Twist is equally unimpressed by Penny. Only a manager with some sales clout can now save the shop. Step forward, Stevie...

Miranda has the shop back but is jealous that Gary has a willowy young girlfriend Rose. She joins Stevie and Tilly on a hunt for a boyfriend and meets TV reporter Mike, who takes her with him on an assignment. Unfortunately this is at a launch party for Penny, who is standing as a local councillor and she and Miranda pretend to be strangers. The evening is a disaster but Mike is persistent and becomes Miranda's date for Stevie's birthday party - even after she has been arrested for impersonating a police officer.

Seriously dating Mike, Miranda sets out to prove she can behave in an adult manner though an escapade at a children's playgroup suggests otherwise, as does her visit to an osteopath, in whose presence she breaks wind as well as knocking his wig to one side. She decides to host a dinner party, the guest of honour being Valerie, Mike's father, as well as a strange traffic warden who feeds kittens from his beard. Unfortunately Valerie turns out to be the osteopath, who does not get on with Penny. Mike does however declare his feelings for Miranda but so does Gary, ...

With Mike away on a course, Miranda is stuck in her flat nursing demanding invalid Penny, who is constantly ringing a bell for attention. Stevie and Tilly arrive, offering to send Miranda on a life skills course, and they discover that handsome young Dr Gail has left his blood pressure cuff behind. Miranda is anxious to return it but is herself stricken with flu though she gets little sympathy from those around her and is forced to play up her symptoms, bringing everybody to the flat, where they all, including Gary and Dr Gail, end up in bed having caught Miranda's ...

Miranda is troubled because Mike keeps telling her he loves her but she does not feel the same way about him and, since his fifteen year old dog has just died, cannot find the right moment to tell him. Of course the man she really loves is Gary who is about to reopen his restaurant. Matters are partially resolved when Mike announces that he is off to work in Africa but when Miranda publicly declares her feelings to Gary at the reopening there is no response, though possibly this is because Gary Barlow has just walked in to meet Raymond Blanc, whom Penny is pursuing to...

Depressed by Gary's failure to reply, Miranda consoles herself by buying kittens but, after meeting Helena, who has returned from a trip to Morocco, decides she will travel abroad - if only to escape her parents' renewing their marriage vows. She gets as far as a hotel in Harpendon, where she vamps bellboy Jason, when Stevie arrives to say Gary wants to see her. Back at her flat Gary at last declares his feelings for her and, in the evening, goes down on one knee in the restaurant to propose. But Mike has returned from Africa and he too proposes. What is a girl to do?