Ben Miller (I)

Another of the four celebrity chat shows taking place on Friday nights these days. Tonight the camp comedian meets actors Thandie Newton and Ben Miller, plugging their new film Huge. Blokeish Liam Gallagher adds a bit of contrast - it'll be interesting to see how he and Carr get on. And Supernanny Jo Frost is also there, fresh from whipping errant toddlers - and their parents - into shape for a new series of her Channel 4 show.

Ben Miller interview

Actor/director on cycle crime, Thandie Newton and urine.

Video: Ben Miller interview

Comedian Ben Miller joined BBC Breakfast to discuss his new documentary and admits that, if it wasn't for Alexander Armstrong, he could have followed a career in quantum physics and Armstrong could have been an opera singer!

Mostly Armstrong and Miller specialise in likeable character comedy, but tonight there are a couple of topical/observational sketches that sharpen their edge a bit. There's a great scene of life at a junk email company as it welcomes a new employee, and another imagining a government campaign to stop people saying "Whatever happened to global warming, eh?" every time it rains. The old favourites are on good form, too. The vampires struggle with a nightclub bouncer, while the RAF pilots are in trouble over their attempt to crack the Enigma code. They worked it out, they assure their superior officer, "using all like, maths and long division and times-ing..." Meanwhile, Ben Miller's most tragic character is back, too: the one who acts out nightmares from his family life as he tries things out. Last week it was a kids' party venue; this week it's worse - he's in a camping shop.

The trouble with sketch shows is that, as they average perhaps 30 gags per episode, they need an almost impossibly large supply of comic energy to keep them from slipping into the doldrums. Ben Miller and Alexander Armstrong are talented, and they do just about keep this show afloat - look out in tonight's episode for a wonderfully handled running joke about a retired pirate now living in suburbia - but it's a long way from the consistent brilliance of Monty Python's Flying Circus or the early days of The Fast Show.

Video: Armstrong & Miller on BBC Breakfast

Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller tell BBC Breakfast where they get the inspiration from for their comedy characters and justify a sketch on their show that makes fun of Breakfast TV.

Television's most likeable double act return with more silly, inoffensive sketches. You don't look to these two for cutting-edge satire, or even the kind of near-the-knuckle social stereotypes peddled by Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse on BBC2. A musical number mocking farmers' markets is the nearest Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller get to social satire, and great fun it is, too. They prefer the old-fashioned kind of sketch based on one comic conceit ruthlessly pursued. One of the best new arrivals is a pair of elderly vampires bemoaning what's become of the vampire world. It's a simple idea made funnier by the performances (Ben Miller's vampire accent is a joy), just as the street-talking RAF pilots play to the pair's gift for posh characters. And yes - the latter are back, and this time they've been roped into D-Day.

Armstrong and Miller interview

Our vampires struggle to fit into a new world full of young sexy bloodsuckers, says comedy duo Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller.

Well-spoken wits Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller return for a third run of their Bafta-winning sketch show. Characters include the German in-laws, roadkill cooks and old-style vampires baffled by the new Twilight generation. Best of all, the street-talking Second World War pilots turn up in Normandy on D-Day. The nature of the beast is that the humour is hit and miss, but the duo have enough charm to get away with it.