Alexander Armstrong

'Felix and Murdo' pilot seen by 650k

Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller's new Channel 4 pilot Felix and Murdo made a quiet impact on TV last night, overnight viewing figures indicate.

You know that feeling you get when a brand-new sitcom arrives and spends most of its first series wobbling around, trying to find its comedy feet? Well you don't get that here. Simon Nye's pilot feels like an old favourite within seconds: two young gents in 1900s London exchanging smut, anachronisms and posh banter. Put crudely it's Edwardian Men Behaving Badly.

With Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller in the leads, the chemistry is as slick as one of their sketches, but writ large. Felix (Miller) is a banker with a sideline in inventing: he devises a terrifying "electricity toothbrush" and a cash dispenser (a small boy inside dishes out cash); while Murdo (Armstrong) is a cocky toff who takes up the javelin to compete in the London Olympics, hoping to impress Felix's suffragette sister. ("What is all this boats for women nonsense?")

The plot goes a bit loopy but the characters gel, the tone works and the rhythms are up and running. Roll on a full series.

Comedy pair Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller star in this one-off sitcom about two jolly posh chaps in London in 1908 - the year the Olympics came to town. Felix (Miller) is supposed to be running the family bank with his sister Winnie but instead prefers to party and fool around with his fiancée. Murdo just likes to party and chase Winnie. "Marry me," he says. "We're too different," she replies. "You can change," he responds. But the realisation that an Olympic athlete can be attractive to women - or, more precisely, Winnie - inspires Murdo to enter the games as a javelin thrower. With Felix as trainer, his chances are only handicapped by a strict regime of drinking, smoking and taking drugs. Plus the fact that he can't throw the javelin.

Felix and Murdo is written by Simon Nye, who created Men Behaving Badly - and with its two male characters, knockabout banter and slight over-reliance on jokes about sex, it is very much an Edwardian Men Behaving Badly. The fact that they have unusual names doesn't disguise the point that Felix and Murdo are really Gary and Tony in old-fashioned suits. Still, the period setting allows Nye to give us the occasional amusing line.

The year's 1908. The scene is the sitting room of old Oxford chums and modern men about town Felix (Ben Miller), an inventor, and Murdo (Alexander Armstrong), the ghosts of the past for a whole slew of sitcom characters to come.

Simon Nye's affectionate Edwardian version of Men Behaving Badly is a gleeful and (presumably) knowing mash-up of every anarchic comedy you can think of, from The Young Ones and Blackadder, to Ab Fab and, of course, Armstrong & Miller (the best bits of which follow), and it's a total hoot; as surreal, silly and puerile as you'd expect - and Armstrong & Miller fans would demand.

Produced for the Comedy Showcase season, this pilot was held over for C4's Christmas season despite having not a flake of snow or festive motif in it. It should stand out like a beacon amid all the repeats of second-rate sitcoms, Christmas specials and period dramas, whilst offering some fun period jokes of its own.

The mad, loose plot of sorts is surprisingly topical, taking in as it does the arrival of the Olympics to the capital and the world of banking, but largely it acts as a tree on which hang such baubles as scatological jokes, laugh-out-loud sight gags, a surreal clubbing scene, lots of Viz-style lewd humour and plain stupid lines such as: 'What is all this boats for women nonsense? Just give them all a boat.' Titter ye, as Frankie Howerd might have said.

Fans of comedy duo Ben Miller and Alexander Armstrong should lap up this spiffingly funny one-off comedy. It's written by Simon Nye (Men Behaving Badly) and is set in London in 1908, the year the Olympics first came to the city.

Murdo (Armstrong) and Felix (Miller) are posh, fun-loving friends who happily indulge in a drink-and-drugs fest while one of them attempts to complete in the Games, and the other plans a sudden marriage to a lady called Fanny (obv), and all the while they utter a non-stop stream of innuendo.

The rave-dancing sequence is hilarious, Armstrong and Miller are a joy, and they're well supported by Georgie King, Katy Wix and Lizzie Roper. Let's have a full series, please.

Ben Miller and Alexander Armstrong team up in time for the Olympics to recreate the first time the games came to Blighty in 1908 in this one-off, hilarious sitcom. The two Edwardian toffs love nothing more than making ignorant innuendos and attending "biff" classical raves as they prepare for the javelin competition.

Bill Bailey to star in Doctor Who Christmas special

Bill Bailey is to appear in this year's Doctor Who Christmas special, with Alexander Armstrong, Outnumbered actress Claire Skinner and The Fast Show's Arabella Weir.

Review: Epic Win, BBC1

Alexander Armstrong takes a break from hosting daytime quiz Pointless to helm another game show which is completely, well, pointless.

Epic Win is a new pointless talent show hosted by Alexander Armstrong, the talents being pointless rather than the show, which is actually quite entertaining in a silly way. This week one contestant triumphantly demonstrated that he could identify historic lawnmowers based only on the strip of grass they'd cut in a lawn. Dolphins can't do that - though I think it may be to their credit as a species.