Arthur Mathews

Celebrating 25 years of Father Ted's hilarity

Twenty-five years ago today, a phenomenon burst upon our television screens. The first showing of Father Ted on Channel 4 brought us the strange and very, very funny world of Craggy Island and its trio of priests with their housekeeper.

Dermot Morgan, remembered by his friends

As Craggy Island's idiot priest turns 25, Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews pay tribute to the late comedy livewire who brought him to life

Top 20 British sitcoms of 21st century: Toast of London

Just after he appeared in The IT Crowd but before he started appearing in TV's What We Do In The Shadows, Matt Berry played jobbing actor Stephen Toast in this enjoyably zany Channel 4 sitcom written by Father Ted co-creator, Arthur Mathews and Berry himself.

Father Ted musical in rehearsals: show almost finished

The popular 90s comedy will be revived by original writers Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews with co-writers Neil Hannon and Paul Woodful.

I loved... bits... of the Road to Brexit, a spirited if ultimately futile half-hour attempt to rip the remaining bejesus out of that political fiasco, in the week Theresa May (favourite sportsman: Geoffrey Boycott. See above, under "obdurate") had told us, 180 times, we were hog-certain slated to leave. Wisely I think Arthur Mathews and Matt Berry had chosen to go not the way of satire but of surreality, and most of the smiles came via much misplaced archive footage - Robert Redford as Alan Johnson, say, or a plucky child in a chariot race being used to illustrate DUP charmer Arlene Foster - but the laughs didn't exactly flow.

Berry is often sublime, and his skewering of pompous pop historians, toothachingly trendy Smug Remainers, sinister Tory bigots, hit in hindsight more targets than I'm giving the programme credit for. But, in the end, no spectacle can compete for humour with the one unspooling before our eyes nightly. A theatre of the absurd, on loop, performed with increasing ineptitude by children who drink, after which one retires hurt to crisp clean sheets, yet carrying the faint, damp whiff of rhinoceros shit.

Road to Brexit review

You'd have to have a heart of stone not to find Matt Berry funny - but somehow this one-off comedy fell flat. Perhaps we're too depressed to laugh now?

Matt Berry is reunited with his Toast of London collaborator Arthur Mathews for the first time since that series finished. This one-off comedy marks the approaching article 50 deadline, with Berry assuming the guise of Michael Squeamish, a bumptious historian on a mission to discover the origins of Britain's decision to leave the EU - undaunted by the need to delve all the way back to the 50s.

Review: The Road To Brexit, BBC2

I didn't write about this Matt Berry one-off written by Arthur Mathews earlier because I assumed it would be postponed when Brexit was postponed. Instead it is going full steam ahead, so at least there is something to laugh about at the moment.

Road To Brexit review

The one-off Road To Brexit is a bit of an oddity, as much funny peculiar as funny ha-ha; but with so much calamitous news surrounding our chaotic leaving of the EU, it's good to have a laugh that isn't dependent upon cynical views of the political shambles, and is simply just daft instead.