Oh - and many cheers to Robert Bathurst - who (as Ed) has been sublimely good as Toast's flatmate. A properly talented cast, allowed to be funny.
Toast Of London - Series 1 Page 4
Just watched episode 5 on catch up. Haven't seen any before but thought that was pretty funny and very watchable.
I ended up watching episode 6 on 4oD last night by mistake. I meant to catch up with episode 5, but that will have to wait for now. Great end to a great series with a lovely James Bond theme running through the final episode. I hope there's a second series. I do fear, though, that the timeslot it received is indicative of Channel 4's faith in it.
Quote: Ben @ 19th November 2013, 12:34 PM GMTI ended up watching episode 6 on 4oD last night by mistake. I meant to catch up with episode 5, but that will have to wait for now. Great end to a great series with a lovely James Bond theme running through the final episode. I hope there's a second series. I do fear, though, that the timeslot it received is indicative of Channel 4's faith in it.
Don't worry, Ben, this will have a Series 2. If you can't muster faith in Channel 4, then have faith in me.
(And that goes for the rest of you non-believers. Scum.)
Just finished off the series and I must say I'm mightily impressed. The first episode was good but I thought it might get a bit predictable after a while but it really has gone from strength to strength. The last episode was effing golden. The scene where toast and his nemesis are doing voice over work for a gay porno had me howling with laughter. Matt Berry and Arthur Mathews seem to have struck gold here.
Let's raise a toast to toast!
Spoiler suppressed.
Full frontal nudity.
And comedy gold.
Ray f**king Purchase's wife is so dirty.
Quote: Ben @ 19th November 2013, 12:34 PM GMTI ended up watching episode 6 on 4oD last night by mistake. I meant to catch up with episode 5, but that will have to wait for now. Great end to a great series with a lovely James Bond theme running through the final episode. I hope there's a second series. I do fear, though, that the timeslot it received is indicative of Channel 4's faith in it.
I doubt the slot means much apart from Channel 4 expected it to only reach a niche audience.
I'm a big fan of Matt Berry and the writing of Arthur Mathews but I found this show relatively hit and miss. There are some lovely moments and I think Berry is excellent as always but some of the writing seemed quite lazy such as the publisher (in ep 5 I think) who discusses spontaneous combustion and then she combusts herself.
I liked the look of this from the trailers and really wanted to like the show but found it all a bit average. For every great exchange between Toast and his agent there is a spontaneous combustion level joke which drags it back to mediocrity.
That said, it's light years ahead of most drivel that passes as comedy these days, such as Miranda, Father Figure and Mrs. Brown's Boys.
I liked the spontaneous combustion moment. 
The dubbing section in yesterday's episode was hilarious.
Quote: Otterfox @ 25th November 2013, 12:40 PM GMTI'm a big fan of Matt Berry and the writing of Arthur Mathews but I found this show relatively hit and miss. There are some lovely moments and I think Berry is excellent as always but some of the writing seemed quite lazy such as the publisher (in ep 5 I think) who discusses spontaneous combustion and then she combusts herself.
I liked the look of this from the trailers and really wanted to like the show but found it all a bit average. For every great exchange between Toast and his agent there is a spontaneous combustion level joke which drags it back to mediocrity.
That said, it's light years ahead of most drivel that passes as comedy these days, such as Miranda, Father Figure and Mrs. Brown's Boys.
That's pretty much my attitude. If there was loads of good stuff on TV I probably wouldn't have bothered with this because I too found the writing a bit lazy (although the acting superb, and the source of all the laughs for me - favourite part was Toast rolling his eyes into the back of his head a few episodes ago). But seeing as there is nothing else of any merit on I watched the whole series.
It was by no means awful, it was perfectly fine, but no better than that. I liked the characters and if they can come up with some plotlines that I'm actually surprised by next series this show will go up in my books.
Quote: Otterfox @ 25th November 2013, 12:40 PM GMTI'm a big fan of Matt Berry and the writing of Arthur Mathews but I found this show relatively hit and miss.
I agree with you. It seemed to be very lazily written and produced.
There was potential for a very funny sitcom, but it needed more rewrites and more time spent on actually MAKING the show.
As I posted earlier, I loved the first episode, with the girlfriend who had almost murdered her last boyfriend, AND the girl who was the hoarder. I also liked the "Bruce Forsyth" look alike joke. So humour spread around quite a few members of the cast.
In fact after watching episode 1 on my own I could not wait to watch it with my wife and my son, who both enjoyed it.
But I have watched every episode since, and not bothered to show ANY of them to my wife and son as I was so disappointed with them.
I think the problem is that too much of the humour was dependent on the Steven Toast character, and I found almost none of the supporting cast were actually very funny (slightly amusing yes, but not FUNNY).
And I have to say the "Ray Purchase" conflict did not for work me at all and only annoyed me.
Virtually the only thing that made me laugh in the last episode was when "evil" Michael Ball came on stage to threaten Steven Toast and burst into a "Les Miserables" type song, but then instead of continuing the song for a few more verses they spoilt it by having him hold one note for about 60 seconds, which got very annoying.
So a decent try, but very messy, very disjointed, and too many misfiring jokes.
Quote: Guilbert @ 25th November 2013, 5:36 PM GMTAs I posted earlier, I loved the first episode, with the girlfriend who had almost murdered her last boyfriend, AND the girl who was the hoarder. I also liked the "Bruce Forsyth" look alike joke. So humour spread around quite a few members of the cast.
Virtually the only thing that made me laugh in the last episode was when "evil" Michael Ball came on stage to threaten Steven Toast and burst into a "Les Miserables" type song, but then instead of continuing the song for a few more verses they spoilt it by having him hold one note for about 60 seconds, which got very annoying.
So a decent try, but very messy, very disjointed, and too many misfiring jokes.
I think we were unimpressed for opposite reasons 
I liked the messy style and slight "amateur" feel rather than it being polished and over-produced. I also quite liked the Ray Purchase conflict because it was very silly, and the Michael Ball holding on to a note thing! Hated the first episode, though. Way too predictable for me. I did that annoying thing of telling my boyfriend what was going to happen next throughout the show just to air my disdain!
The less traditional plots thereafter made it feel less predictable, but some of the jokes felt old and easy - the gay sex voiceover bit (which I felt like I'd seen a million times in other shows), the "I'm having sex with my enemy's wife" plotline, even Purchase going mad at the end. Just very meh. But it had some golden moments mixed in.
I have tried but I really do not get all the praise for this. Matt Berry is a crude one-note comic actor and the scripts are perfunctory at best. Sorry.
Maybe there are some misses in this series, but boy, some of the hits are glorious.
The clip in the sound studio doing the voicebites for the Navy submarines is magic: the commands he's asked to record are just incredibly funny, especially the last one "abandon the vessel immediately!" Since when was that a proper order on a crowded vehicle, never mind a staffed underwater vessel?
Toast's barely contained jealous contempt for the twenty-somethings also spills out in this clip: "Where's the other prick?" to which Clem Fandango says "Oh you mean Danny?" ha, ha ... too good.
The names of the characters are also pretty good, they seem to be abandoned attempts to give self-descriptive names.
I'm a big Doon Mackichan fan, but I thought Fiona Mollison in the pilot was totally brilliant, was sad to not see her in the main series.
I have just watched episode 2 on 4OD. I just have 3, 4 and 6 to watch. I have enjoyed all three but episode 2 has been my favourite with several laugh out loud moments. I thought the conflict with Ray Purchase was played really well. I don't know where the allegations of lazy writing comes from! I think it is very cleverly underwritten in parts and I enjoy the sporadic surreal moments.