Chris Morris (I)

Sirens looked promising on paper. Based on Tom Reynolds's popular blog, Random Acts of Reality, which wryly chronicled his time as an emergency response technician in the London Ambulance service, it stars three decent young actors - Rhys Thomas (from Bellamy's People), Kayvan Novak (Chris Morris's film Four Lions) and Richard Madden (Game of Thrones) - as cynical, laddish paramedics striving to treat their often harrowing work as just another day at the office. Unfortunately, it turns out to be one of those comedy-dramas that is neither funny nor dramatic. It combines Green Wing's irritating air of unreality with Skins's desperation to appear edgy, meaning that the banter just doesn't ring true, while the tediously frequent sexual encounters are even less believable.

Book review: Digusting Bliss - Chris Morris biography

Disgusting Bliss: "The Brass Eye of Chris Morris" is the latest publication from cult biographer Lucian Randall. The biography commentates on the rise and rise of the mysterious comedian Chris Morris, highlighting in particular the development and success of his controversial TV creation Brass Eye.

Leading up to the British Comedy Awards, Comic's Choice invited five celebrated comedians - Alan Davies, Sean Lock, Jo Brand, Jessica Hynes, Lee Mack - to choose a shortlist and winner from among their own personal past favourites. Bill Bailey played affable host, something he does effortlessly.

Forgetting for one moment the universally acknowledged truth that no comic truly enjoys any laughter they haven't themselves produced, the show's premise was flimsy in the extreme. Not to mention confusing - Alan Davies nominated Chris Morris as Best Breakthrough Act for work done in 1994.

Davies also took part in a film recreation of an unsuccessful audition he once attended, as gratuitous a piece of padding as I have seen in a long time. This lack of coherence was reflected in the meaningless studio set design which threw together leather armchairs, old boilers, stuffed elk heads and bicycles combined to create the effect of a gentleman's club located in a garage.

Basically Comic's Choice was yet another excuse to disinter old archive clips instead of producing fresh comedy. Although, having said that, the archive clips were rather excellent, so I'm not complaining too loudly.

Four Lions nominated for two Baftas

Chris Morris' suicide-bomber comedy Four Lions has been nominated for 2 awards at this year's BAFTA Film Awards.

Audio: Chris Morris interview

A rare audio interview with Chris Morris on public radio show The Sound of Young America.

Mark Heap interview

Actor Mark Heap, 53, has appeared in comedy shows including Green Wing and also Chris Morris's Jam and Brass Eye. He stars as a neurotic rambling club leader in new BBC4 sitcom The Great Outdoors.

That Mitchell & Webb Look review

This new series won't disappoint fans but it's hardly likely to attract a new audience who have become suspicious of the sketch show as a genre following its sophisticated deconstruction in Chris Morris' Jam and Channel 4's Green Wing.

Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong are a writing team garlanded with awards for their work on edgy comedies like The Thick of It and Peep Show. They also co-wrote the film Four Lions, Chris Morris's black comedy about suicide bombers. It might seem a far cry from Four Lions to two old codgers, but Bain and Armstrong's likeable sitcom about an ageing pair of ill-matched blokes has the same vein of recognisable absurdity running through it as all their best stuff. As we rejoin Roy (Clive Swift) and Tom (Roger Lloyd Pack), in an episode written by Simon Blackwell, they are eating olives and rice cakes for breakfast while arguing about whose turn it is to do the shopping. The fact that male hopelessness in everything from shopping to romance remains as much a problem in age as in youth is a joke the series plays off well. The pair are still clumsily besotted with their neighbour Sally (Jane Asher) and concerned that she has a new boyfriend ("She keeps going out with men who aren't even remotely us," moans Tom). But now there's a new distraction - a stylish librarian, Barbara, played by Cherie Lunghi.

A welcome return for the Bafta-winning sitcom set in a corporation's dingy computer department. This is the start of series four. Many would have wielded the axe after a patchy debut run. The show's stay of execution was largely down to affection for writer/director Graham Linehan - the man behind Father Ted and Black Books, Chris Morris collaborator and recipient of comedy's Ronnie Barker Award last year. His creation is now worthy of those credentials, going from strength to strength. Tonight's opening episode is entitled Jen the Fredo, after the weak Corleone brother in The Godfather, and is crammed with knowing nods to the revered Mafia movie. Desperate to escape IT, Jen (Katherine Parkinson) is made Entertainments Manager by unreconstructed boss Douglas (Matt Berry) - a man given to pronouncements such as, "I like my women how I like my toast. Hot and consumable with butter." Jen's new job means showing braying businessmen a good time - and a theatre trip to The Vagina Monologues isn't quite the ticket. Back in the bunker, geeky Moss (Richard Ayoade) is devising Dungeons & Dragons-style role-play games and heartbroken Roy (Chris O'Dowd) keeps weepily guzzling white wine at his desk. All these plot strands come together ingeniously. Most laughs come from Berry and Ayoade's more cartoonish characters, but Linehan isn't too proud to write in the odd pratfall and it's so well-acted, one scene is genuinely touching, despite its silliness.