Andrew Nickolds

First Listen: Ed Reardon's Week (Series 5)

An absolute gem of a sitcom, with an absolute gem of a sitcom character. In Ed Reardon's Week, writers Christopher Douglas (who plays Ed) and Andrew Nickolds have created a perfect character for a Radio 4 sitcom.

Ed Reardon's Week returned yesterday, and was as brilliantly bitter as ever. Surprisingly, Reardon was in a relationship (for a record-breaking second month). But you knew it would never work, and Reardon was soon snarling about his girlfriend's habit of turning the toaster down from a virile and life-affirming five to a pallid two. When they split up, he was left with mixed feelings, not unlike those experienced on reading that a puppet theatre has had its arts council grant cut.

His cat Elgar went missing, and Reardon penned a four-page note to pin on lampposts. One of the running gags is that Reardon never writes to the required length, and this cropped up again with his work on cut-down versions of modern classics. He'd reduced a Nick Hornby novel to half a page, explaining that when you remove the self-regarding offal about what trousers he wore in the 1970s there's not much left. By the end of the episode, things were back to normal: the girlfriend had gone, the toaster was at five, and he was reunited with Elgar, playing a game of TV licence final-reminder football with him, and railing against the idiocy of the modern world.

In Ed Reardon's Week we found the world's most frustrated author in rather less straitened circumstances than usual, living with the successful writer Mary Potter (the point being made was obvious, but unspoken) and earning regular money by condensing the works of more successful writers for readers with short attention spans. He got Nick Hornby down to half a page, Tony Parsons to a single paragraph.

There was a beautiful little throwaway scene in which Reardon corrected the grammar of the nubile literary agent, Ping. She said something 'would of' happened, he pointed out that 'would have' might take longer to say, but had the advantage of being grammatically correct. Later we learnt that Ping had a double starred first from Balliol. It summed up him, her and the times - he, with his dedication to a language battered beyond recognition; she, with a good brain that has sifted out the bits it needs to be successful and discarded the rest.

Elgar the cat went missing, and Reardon hung a four-page 'Lost' notice on lampposts. Then a large cat was spotted floating down the canal, and Reardon fished it out.

By the end, all was well. Elgar lived still, and Reardon had gone to a lot of trouble to bury a mere lookalike. And Mary Potter had departed, driven away by Reardon's jealousy and inability to change. So, no girlfriend, then, but his flat was his own once more and his cat was by his side. Misery may love company, but it likes to choose the company it keeps.

Maybe I was once married to Ed Reardon. I know him so well. He grumbles (accurately but ineffectively), grinds out the words (but without much reward), is always broke (and always will be). But, my word, he is funny. And true. Especially now the more successful Mary (Sally Grace) has entered his life, buoying him up, buying the drinks, at war with his cat. I have been half in love with easeful Ed, creation of Christopher Douglas (who also plays him) and Andrew Nickolds, since he first appeared. Now he's back, Radio 4's a cheerier place.

Ed Reardon, the writer who made a name for himself by creating a seminal episode of Tenko, is back, and this time he's sharing his one bedroom apartment with a woman. Fans of this series, the funniest sitcom ever to grace Radio 4, will be delighted to learn that this, being Ed Reardon's love-life, is destined to fail. Despite the fact that his lady friend is a fellow writer - hence they can share the pleasures of buying scratchcards and tobacco - even she finds his sneering and his sarcasm too much to bear.

The misanthropic writer returns for a new series of the award-winning sitcom by Christopher Douglas (who also plays Reardon) and Andrew Nickolds. Unmissable.

Ed Reardon is a 52-year-old writer who has drifted into obscurity since his magnus opus was published in the 1970s. He now teaches creative writing at the local Sports Centre and writes gift books such as The Love Poetry Of Nigel Mansell to make ends meet.

Ed finds that 'the besetting dilemma of the life literary is always whether to invest one's time and energies in a project which might realize royalties two years down the line, or, if you and your cat need to eat a bit sooner than that, to nip down to the police station and pick up a quick tenner for standing in line at an identity parade.'

When he's not at identity parades, Ed attempts to write TV scripts for 12-year-old producers and asks his agent to email him a list of writers who are below him in the charts at Amazon. He considers the occasional seduction but, being long divorced, is unsure that he can remember how. He desperately searches through magazines and newspapers for reviews of his work and is gratified to get an honourable mention in Caravan & Camper.

It is a brilliant tour de force.

The sharpest, funniest and most stinging comedy for years.