Anthony Head

At the top of a hill in a Surrey village, opposite Budgens and behind a security fence, lies a top-secret scientific base where a crack team of geniuses dare to think the unthinkable - so long as it is cheap to make. Written by actor Neil Warhurst, creator of the 2009 satire Beyond the Pole, this sharp new sitcom gets a late placing on the schedule because of content and language.

The team of eccentric scientists - all of them socially inept in one way or another - quickly establish themselves as identifiable characters, particularly Anthony Head as the professor in charge of the hapless unit. This is good, and definitely worth trying out.

Cabin Pressure is one of the best written, cast, acted and directed comedies on anywhere.

Although only radio can make us picture exactly the single old plane on which this little airline depends, only John Finnemore's pen plus the sublime talents of Stephanie Cole, Roger Allam, Anthony Head and Anna Crilly could, last Friday, raise a salutary barrier between the turbulent real world on either side of their glorious fiction. Produced and directed, brilliantly, by David Tyler for independents Pozzitive.

You may have heard this when it first went out in the 6.30pm comedy zone but if you are generally averse to what's offered in those slots and thus missed it, grab it now. Mark Evans writes one of the wittiest, most ingenious scripts on the air, a Dickensian pastiche with a slight Rocky Horror Show echo. Director Gareth Edwards has cast it beautifully and the actors (Richard Johnson and Anthony Head among them) give it their considerable all.

A freshly minted comedy classic here, as the third series of Mark Evans's Dickensian spoof gets a full commercial release following its Radio 4 run. While strictly speaking it's a literary parody, keen scholars shouldn't expect too much in the way of donnish wit: the focus here is much more on balls-to-the-wall silliness with flourishes of surrealism. Bleak Expectations chronicles the struggles of orphan turned wealthy wastepaper-basket magnate Pip Bin (played by ebullient, talented newcomer Tom Allen) against the villainous activities of his legal guardian and tormentor-in-chief, the inappropriately named Mr Gently Benevolent (a who-knew comic performance of genius from Buffy's one-time mentor Anthony Head). While the show cocks plenty of snooks at costume-drama cliches, bigger laughs come from outlandish moments like the succession of bizarre and ineffectual inventions offered up by Bin's nice but useless engineer sidekick, Harry Biscuit.

When last we heard from Pip Bin, he had thwarted the evil Mr Gently Benevolent and his equally evil plans for world domination. Now, to the great delight of all right-minded folk, Mark Evans's superlative parody of everything Victorian, but mostly its literature, is back for a third series. The older Sir Pip continues to tell his life story to his son-in-law, Sourquill, otherwise known as "the fly in the ointment, the dead rat in the vegetable soup, the pig-and-shellfish surprise at a kosher banquet". Surely now the young Pip can look forward to a quiet existence with Ripely Fecund? Alas, no, as a seance goes badly awry - and an inspector calls. Rich, ripe language, a hissable villain and a sublime cast, including Anthony Head, who is clearly having the most fun with this delicious silliness, make for the best radio known to man.

Though it's a comedy, so strong and empathetic are its performances that Free Agents actually feels more like a comedy-drama in the vein of Cold Feet - which is no bad thing. This is a series set in the world of talent agents: a profession which can yield some examples of terrible human vileness (see Anthony Head's agency boss Stephen), but also surprising vulnerability. Green Wing's Stephen Mangan excels as weepy, recently divorced agent Alex. As we join him, he's trying to talk up his one-night stand with co-worker Helen (Sharon Horgan).

Comedy drama The Invisibles axed after one series

Comedy drama The Invisibles, starring Warren Clarke and Anthony Head, has been axed after just one series.

Filthier than Ray Mears' armpits after a week swamp snorkelling, the sailor's vocabulary peppered throughout the fractured romance between Stephen Mangan and Sharon Horgan has kept sappiness at bay. There is some affection in here somewhere, but thankfully it's been buried under a barrage of cynicism and damaged personalities, which is such a change from the usual romantic comedy. And there's certainly nothing usual about Anthony Head's wedding in this series closer, where he's all set to marry a high-class hooker...

A reasonably tittersome sitcom that has largely kept its head above water thanks to some good performances from the leads (although Sharon Horgan irritates me intensely and I can't work out why). But the real star of the show has been Anthony Head as slimy agency boss Stephen, who manages to do sleazy better than any other actor on TV. It's no Peep Show - nor is it in the same league as The IT Crowd - but, Free Agents hasn't been dreadful, and a second series would be welcome.