Chris Addison

The return of The Thick of It

Chris Addison, star of the part-improvised sitcom The Thick of It, describes the stresses and joys of filming.

Chris Addison Interview

Den Of Geek chats to actor Chris Addison about In The Loop, touring and sitting next to Tom Baker...

There are plenty of quiz shows on TV so it's nice to see a format where questions can cover just about anything from Die Hard to the bard.

Quip queen Sandi Toksvig hosts this cultural comedy quiz, while captains and reliable comics Chris Addison and Sue Perkins are joined by hand-picked celebrity guests to face quick fire questions from across the arts and serve up plenty of irreverent laughs along the way.

Expect an arched eyebrow and plenty of sardonic quips as Sandi Toksvig reprises her role as literary quizmaster. Filmed at the Hay festival, this tongue-in-cheek series invites the likes of Rick Wakeman, Jan Ravens, John O'Farrell and Frank Skinner to test their know-how: whereupon Toksvig will separate the truly bookish from the blusterers. Also parading their Eng. Lit. credentials will be returning team captains Sue Perkins and Chris Addison.

Dave's flagship programme. Okay, it's not perfect - but it can be funny. It's hosted by kindly John Sergeant, with Rufus Hound and Marcus Brigstocke as captains - they're nowhere near awful. The standard of guest is pretty high - the first ep kicks off with ever-good-value Dara O'Briiiiaiiin and The Thick Of It's Chris Addison. He's going to be a Hollywood player after In The Loop comes out, according to yesterday's supplements. All in all, it'll be a welcome relief from today's News At Ten.

A well-meaning sitcom, designed as a throwback to the 1980s - when studio-based comedies were often full of caricatures, catchphrases and total silliness. The idea of a bunch of university scientists getting into crazy scrapes every week was a neat platform for surreal, broad comedy, but Lab Rats seemed two decades out of date from the start. Intentionally, or not. It's not that this brand of comedy has totally vanished (see Father Ted in the '90s, or The IT Crowd right now), but it needs to be far cleverer than this. Still, writer-star Chris Addison made a good impression.

Armando's Loop gets Sundance premiere

Armando Iannucci's movie spin-off from The Thick of It is receive its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival next month. In The Loop - which stars James Gandolfini, Chris Addison, Peter Capaldi, and Steve Coogan - will have its first public screening on January 22.

Think Yes Minister on speed - and that includes the cameraman. But lurching around with hand-held cameras is all part of the modern mockumentary, a reminder that this is on-the-fly comedy rather than a contrived sitcom. The result here is brilliant, if you can live with a slight headache.

Jim Hacker lives in the form of hapless Minister for Social Affairs Hugh Abbot (Chris Langham) but with more sweary bits. And while Sir Humphrey Appleby was all oily charm, Abbot's advisers (James Smith and Chris Addison) are more bumbling and insecure.

But nowhere in Yes Minister was there anyone like splenetic chief political adviser Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), clearly modelled on Tony Blair's spinmeister, Alastair Campbell.

Sandi Toksvig chairs this comedy panel game in which celebrities are given the answer, and they have to come up with possible questions. It sounds like a round of Mock the Week expanded into a full half-hour, but with Chris Addison and Sue Perkins as team captains should be diverting enough.

For all the abuse Ricky Gervais receives, his astute awareness of the inner workings of the BBC was always fascinating to watch in Extras, especially when he launched his fake BBC sitcom When The Whistle Blows with its cheesy lines, studio laughter, simplistic acting and staged sets.

Surely the BBC doesn't make dated shows like that any more? Sadly, it does, as anyone who has been following Lab Rats will be aware. Last night marked the final episode of the Chris Addison comedy about university professors at work in the laboratory. The quality of actors involved - such as Addison, who dazzled in The Thick Of It - isn't in dispute but the BBC's desire to stick a laughter track over the weak jokes only highlighted the unfunny incidents.

Elsewhere, Helen Moon, a Patricia Routledge lookalike, spent the episode opening doors to pour scorn on the others before disappearing. Then there was the experienced Selina Cadell, who hammed it up as the Dutch dean of the university, who, it transpired this week, happened to own a slutty pigeon. Actually, that was amusing. But that was it. A shame - especially when it's obvious Addison's capable of so much more.