Alex Macqueen

Radio Times review

Chris Addison and Jo Joyner leave behind The Thick of It and EastEnders respectively and make a left turn. They come together to star in a romcom about a young-ish couple in Kendal, who are bearing up after her recent affair and attempting to rebuild their relationship.

The premise is meant to make Trying Again edgier and more emotional than comedy dramas like Stella and Mount Pleasant, which it resembles on the surface. This doesn't come through much in these first two episodes, since they're too busy being funny: writer Simon Blackwell fills them with strong gags and neat plotting (the callback pay off at the end of episode one is a killer), while Alun Cochrane, Elizabeth Berrington and Alex MacQueen are all on form as cartoonish, traditional-sitcom supporting characters.

The show's identity problem scarcely matters. In particular, Joyner is a revelation as the funny, energetic foil to Addison's nervous, cowardly weed. A new comedy star is born.

Radio Times review

The thinness of the series' premise is exposed in this week's two stories. It's always a delight listening to Rebecca Front and Kevin Eldon weaving their magic in the reader's chair, but their tales aren't particularly inspiring. Toby Davies's story of what happens when a writer of erotic thrillers finds a lost Shakespearean manuscript in his attic feels forced, while Eldon's parable about gratitude plays like a menacing Mr Men and is graced by a performance by The Thick of It's Alex Macqueen - the very personification of Mr Uppity.

The terrific Alex MacQueen excels as one of those fans who lurk outside theatres hoping for an autograph or a glimpse of an actor. MacQueen plays a video shop manager who lies in wait to give (very) critical notes to stage performers. The others are wacky and unbelievable: two women who aren't allowed within 50ft of John Nettles, and a man who's hand-made a ludicrous gift for Suranne Jones. It's written by actors Catherine McCormack and Laura Power, with perhaps a smidgen of contempt.

Last in the exquisitely funny series. Helene is confined to the attic until her pelvic explosion cometh, while Doctor Foggarty, wretched with drink, tries to make another go of it with Crippled Hester. Julia Davis and co-writer Barunka O'Shaughnessy must take several bows to deafening applause for this comic masterpiece. The hoot-per-minute rate has remained high throughout and among an exemplary cast, Alex MacQueen (as Edmund) did a full Sheryl Crow, moving from comedy backing singer to lead vocals with aplomb.

Hunderby, starring and written Julia Davis is a fruity romp, and it benefited hugely from a comedy performer normally the butt of jibes seizing his chance of a lead role. Alex MacQueen - the biscuit-nibbling, blue-sky-thinking buffoon in The Thick Of It - was a parson grieving for his dead wife. "Many a haggard fishwife was eager to warm the dent in the widower's bed," we were told. Eventually he remarried, but his new bride struggled to match up to a woman who was "proficient on both harpsichord and tuba and could outrun any negro". After bedroom conjugals - as squirm-inducing as you'd expect from Davis - the parson liked to recover with a glass of "bubbly milk". The creator played the demonic housekeeper in an eyepatch. At dinner one night, one of the guests remarked on the crunchiness of her fayre. "Battered lambs' faces, sir - 12 more in the pot."

"Last night I dreamed I went to Hunderby (Sky Atlantic) again ..." Yes, I think that has a certain ring to it. OK, so no one actually says that in this filthy little comedy, written by and starring Julia Davis, but it's clear she's more than just nodding at Rebecca. It pretty much is Rebecca, with added Julia Davis-macabre (Daphne Doom Horror here? Sorry). And extra Nighty-Night inappropriateness, because she's Julia Davis. Oh, and she has taken it back to the 1830s, presumably because she likes the feel and smell of them days, the clothes. And the olde-worlde speak.

That kind of language does sit very nicely with Davis's potty pen. No, nicely is not right, more like wrongly. But gloriously wrongly. "You are much darker down there than perhaps I'd imagined," says Edmund the vicar, staring at his new bride who's naked in the bath.

"Do I not please you, sir?" asks poor Helene.

"Nay, nay, 'tis just that Arabelle was smooth as ham, nature did not busy her broken mound with such a black and forceful brush."

Arabelle is the previous wife, the Rebecca character who hangs like a stone around poor Helene's neck, perfect in every way (including perfectly smooth as ham "down there").

Poor Helene is taken off to be shaved by Dorothy, the Mrs Danvers housekeeper character (Davis, beautifully deadpan and creepy), before the marriage can be consummated.

"Come bride, 'tis a quarter after 10, we shall intercourse until a 30 after," says Edmund cheerfully (another great comedy performance, by Alex MacQueen). I'm not quite sure why, but that little indefinite article before "30" adds an extra spoonful of cringiness. Davis is good like that, with language; she can milk an extra wince out of a line, just by adding a tiny little word.

It's not just about the words though. The sex, when it (sort of) happens, is horrendous, as horrid as the two scenes of comedy dancing are hilarious. Like squeaky rabbit rape, though perhaps technically not rape because, as Helene says, "'tis not in".

Yes, sometimes it feels as if Davis is showing off, simply demonstrating that she dares to go to places no one else does (especially places "down there"). Why shouldn't she, though? It doesn't all work, doesn't all come off; at times you're spluttering and shuddering at the wrongness. Laughing a lot too, though, because it is, as I said, gloriously wrongness.

Oh and unlike the weekend's Bad Sugar (which Davis starred in) and A Touch of Cloth, it's not just a series of jokes. There's mortar sticking the gags together, a reason to come back for more. I mean a story. Not Davis's story, perhaps, but a very good one.

In this secular age for the great god TV with its flock now fragmented, Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror dared to show streets that had been deserted for the goggle-box. But if you missed his satire you'll probably never guess the must-see: the Prime Minister having sex with a pig, to comply with kidnap demands and save a princess. We didn't see the actual act - not even Channel 4 could show that - though we got to watch other people watching: in pubs, on hospital wards, home alone, and in the corridors of power. Lindsay Duncan, who once stalked the corridors televisually as Maggie Thatcher, played the PM's press secretary; Alex MacQueen and Justin Edwards, who once stalked them in The Thick of It as, respectively, the baldy blue-sky thinker and the blinky-eyed Newsnight nutter, were in there, too. This was Black Mirror's first problem: these familiar faces didn't serve as reassurance when dealing with such shocking subject matter, they simply reminded you of programmes which were funnier, better.

Its second problem was believability, or lack of. Not the belief that such a scenario could play out, pig and all, but the one that the cops could be so stupid as to accept without checking that the severed finger delivered to the news network did in fact belong to the princess (it was fat and obviously a man's). For a story to shoot off into such flights of fancy, it first needs to have covered a few of the basics.

The satire, though, was good. Brooker is a sharp observer of the world whizzing round him, and being spun in every sense - where a government thinks it can conceal in the time-honoured way only for a little lad with a smartphone already to know everything, forcing a No 10 aide to concede: "It's trending on Twitter." And where a female journalist desperate for a scoop will ping photos of herself in the style of Ashley Cole to a government underling who'll blow what's left of national security on the issue because he's desperate for a shag.

Not a complete failure, then, and I liked the PM''first response to the kidnapping ("What do they want? Money, release a jihadi, save the f***ing libraries?"). I also liked the idea that a jobbing porn actor might be roped in to play the premier (that this fellow would be on some "By appointment to..." file). But much as I wanted to see Michael Callow with his SamCam deadringer wife as our current leader, I couldn't. That's no reflection on Rory Kinnear who was his usual brilliant self. Whatever else he does in his career, he'll always be answering questions about this.

These days it would be blasphemy to suggest that Monty Python's Life of Brian isn't one of the funniest films ever made. But it was a very different story back in 1979 when the Pythons found themselves practically crucified and accused of making fun of Jesus Christ.

Here, Tony Roche's ridiculously funny film pulls off an ingenious balancing trick with its accurate and affectionate pastiche of Pythonesque humour, while looking back at the furore Life of Brian created.

But as well as getting in lots of jokes at the expense of the BBC (the scene starring Alex MacQueen as the BBC's Head Of Rude Words is priceless), it also sends up the comedians themselves.

For instance, Michael Palin (played by Charles Edwards) is described as the nicest man in the world, but what's even more pleasing for Python fans is that his wife really is just Terry Jones in a dress.

Rufus Jones who plays Terry is brilliant, but all the casting is a delight. Steve Punt finally gets to capitalise on his resemblance to Eric Idle, while Darren Boyd, despite cheap-looking hair, is absolutely bang on as John Cleese. Or is it Basil Fawlty?

It all leads up to the now infamous live TV debate on the BBC talk show Friday Night, Saturday Morning, on which Cleese and Palin defended Life of Brian against the Bishop of Southwark and satirist Malcolm Muggeridge. This part of the film needed no script - it's an edited version of the actual debate, which has been partially seen before in other documentaries.

It's being shown again in full for the first time in more than 30 years straight after this at 10.30pm.

The late John Sullivan's prequel to Only Fools and Horses staggers on to 1962 with Del and Rodney's mum, Joan (Kellie Bright managing to be both sassy and naive), holding down two jobs to keep the Trotter family going. Meanwhile, Rodney's biological dad and smooth criminal Freddie Robdal (Nicholas Lyndhurst) is being hounded by DI Thomas (Mel Smith at his jowly best) for the Margate jewellery heist, and young Del (James Buckley) has got engaged to a posh bird called Barbara. Samantha Spiro and Alex MacQueen give wonderfully over-the-top, cartoon-like performances as the up-market Birds. The disdainful yet bewildered expression on their faces when they hear that Del's dad is a docker is akin to that of Downton Abbey's Maggie Smith when she enquired exactly what a weekend is. But, despite these moments, most of this is clunky and charmless. And lovely Lambrettas and Golden Egg restaurant aside, some of the period detail is strangely unconvincing. Yet audiences have loved earlier outings. An enduring nostalgia for the Trotters maybe.

There's a battle between the sexes raging, sparked by Karen's ambition to be an astronaut. Her tiny sexist brother, Ben, dismisses this out of hand on the grounds that "girls can't throw". This makes sense to him, even if it baffles everyone else. But the pair move on to safer territory when Pete lets slip that he has a hospital appointment for a colonoscopy. Karen is remorseless about how anything can photograph her dad's insides until Pete is forced to reveal the truth. Cue much speculation about "midget doctors". It's another painfully funny episode that's packed with zinging lines from the kids and acute observations about the tiny pitfalls of a generally happy suburban family life - like not writing engagements on the calendar, and how to deal with a pompous windbag neighbour (a great cameo from The Thick of It's Alex Macqueen).