Chris Bran

For pure imagination, there's currently little to match Chris Bran and Justin Chubb's sitcom about the parochial island vaguely inspired by their native Guernsey. This week, the ineffectually autocratic Arbiter Maven tries to stop residents from celebrating the festival of Nacken. They ignore him, sneaking off to the Moosic tavern for a night of revelry, with entertainment provided by Master Croog and Rex Camalbeeter. Trouble ensues, however, when a certain someone is awoken. Rob Brydon guests.

Radio Times review

This is the one the fans have been waiting for. It's the festival of Nacken so, ignoring Arbiter Maven's edict to take their Nightly Bye pill and sleep in peace, the residents hit the Moosic Tavern for a Dionysian all-nighter.

Inspired by Sky's smart decision to package up all the songs from series one into a music special two years ago, creators Chris Bran and Justin Chubb deliver a whole episode of catchy, weird sing-along folk. It's safe to say the pair, who write the series in a room full of musical instruments and switch constantly between script and song, own a copy of The Wicker Man.

Amid all the strange duos played by Bran and Chubb is guest star Rob Brydon as the beefy, Springsteen-esque Rex Camalbeeter. His song Female Badger will stay in your head for a week.

Now is Threesday at Tidetime Ten after Noon Day Gush on the unique comedy isle of Jinsy, where we find Arbiter Maven hankering after a shiny pendant bestowed upon star pupils by girls' etiquette teacher Miss Penny. Dame Eileen Atkins is the sparkling talent in tonight's guest spot, joining comedy genii Justin Chubb and Chris Bran as the daily whirl spins around them, tonight featuring a singing obituary for those who succumbed to a dodgy quiche. It's a big 'woof' from us.

Radio Times review

Eileen Atkins is this episode's celebrity guest, playing the head of a girls' finishing school that Arbiter Maven (Justin Chubb) wants to infiltrate, so he can get one of their nice silver pendants. Before long he and Sporall (Chris Bran) are in party dresses and pigtails, learning how to work a fringed umbrella - but the school has a dark and silly secret.

As usual, the irrelevant songs and sketches provide the biggest laughs: a sung obituary for the victims of a bad quiche, an ad for psychotropic chewing gum, and folk singer Melody Lane with the plaintive ballad I Really Really Really Really Really Really Really Really Really Really Really Really Really.

Featuring a talent competition judged by a dog, a truly hair-raising chase sequence and guest turns from Stephen Fry as a luxuriantly locked hair doctor and Ben Miller as a busty accountant's daughter (and her dad), life in Jinsy is as wonderfully bizarre as it was first time around. So it's a warm welcome back for Justin Chubb and Chris Bran's inspired mix of crackers characters, singing obituaries and catchy tunes. Top of the Jinsy Hit Parade in this opening double bill are the skiffle-tastic Was It You? and torch song Vegetable Tricks - and you also get to see what Greg Davies looks like in a skirt, in case you'd been wondering.

Stand by your tesselators for series two of the surreal sitcom. Fans of its lunatic thatch of The Wicker Man and Mighty Boosh will be pleased to know its formula is unchanged: crazy tale interspersed with beautifully crafted diversions.

To the uninitiated, This Is Jinsy is set on a fictional island, isolated in behaviour, religion and technology from the rest of the world. Parking meter-style tesselators spout vaguely sinister pronouncements about clothing, food or furniture, and entertainment takes the form of a talent contest presided over by a dog called Sandy.

The butt of nearly all the jokes is Arbiter Maven (Justin Chubb), a ludicrous popinjay whose disastrous follication ceremony in the first of this double bill leads to some hairy, Doctor Who-style horrors. And it's his more intelligent assistant, Sporall (Chris Bran), with his brown 70s suit and luxuriant 70s hair, who gets in most of the jibes.

This Is Jinsy may be the very definition of cult, but it's one that attracts Big Names. Stephen Fry is in the opener as a hair-museum curator, Ben Miller plays a feral accountant in the second episode; Eileen Atkins and Derek Jacobi will pop in later in the run.

Tracee Henge's Unwinese weather forecasts are especially fine, and the mad songs are as MP3-friendly as ever.

Justin Chubb and Chris Bran interview

As series two begins, we talk to the men whose strange little creation attracts guest performances from the likes of Stephen Fry, Olivia Colman and Derek Jacobi.

This comedy series is a curious mix of The League of Gentlemen and The Mighty Boosh, but falls short of both. Devised by and starring Justin Chubb and Chris Bran, it's certainly like nothing else around. Tonight's episode finds a folk-thrash band causing a stir on the other-worldly Jinsy, the imaginary island on which the series is set.

Word of mouth is growing: This Is Jinsy doubled its audience in its second week. If you're coming in now, you've hit upon the best episode yet.

It's snowing, which is bad for shorts-wearer Arbiter Maven (Justin Chubb) even before he has to trek across country with his fearsome former teacher - a delicious guest turn from Simon Callow. Nigel Planer is equally fantastic as a madman who lives in a miniature chalet, while Harry Hill returns, in that figure-hugging coral skirt, as sensual law enforcer Joon Boolay.

Amid the nonstop gags, Chubb and co-creator Chris Bran always steal the show with their songs. Tonight they're dusty geriatrics Retch and Hoik, authors of the rousing march Put in Your Teeth. Plus, the ever-present, eight-strong Island Singers - Chubb and Bran in four different wigs and frocks, superimposed next to each other - offer thoughtful comment on the futility of working life.