Chris O'Dowd

Cuban Fury - review

Nimble-footed stars such as Nick Frost, Chris O'Dowd and Olivia Colman step lively in a comedy that doesn't quite fill the floor.

Radio Times review

TV action hero Kiefer Sutherland, in London filming a new series of his frenetic drama series 24, gets comfy on the Ross sofa tonight. He probably needs the rest - recent tabloid photos showed him on location running around a block of flats in the capital. After a four-year break the series returns to Sky1 later this year, with Bauer on the run from the CIA.

Also on the show is actress Emily Mortimer, talking about the faintly autobiographical sitcom she's made for Sky Living with best pal Dolly Wells, Doll & Em. And twinkly sex symbol Chris O'Dowd will tell Ross all about his role as a salsa dancer in the Nick Frost comedy film Cuban Fury.

In an inspired piece of scheduling, Channel 4 bins the Come Dine With Me repeats and dedicates the whole of Christmas Eve to Graham Linehan's honkingly funny sitcom. Set in a terrifyingly realistic man cave in the basement of a dysfunctional London company it is, according to those who know their ethernet cables from their elbows, almost a documentary.

Surrounded by empty boxes, unopened manuals, stickers and plastic desk toys, Moss (Richard Ayoade) and Roy (Chris O'Dowd, before he was Bridesmaids famous) skive, snigger, talk about girls and tell anyone with an ailing computer to turn it off and on again. Noel Fielding lives in the cupboard. Their female boss knows nothing of these annoying computer thingies and is preoccupied with her car crash love life.

In honour of this festive extravaganza, fans have voted for their favourite episode and Linehan has nominated his. There is also a repeat of the final one-off show from earlier this year and a documentary featuring interviews with cast and A-list fans.

Of course, every night is IT Crowd night somewhere on the Channel 4 network. Like Father Ted, it's become one of those endlessly repeated classics that feels dangerous to even dip into for fear of finding yourself still transfixed a couple of hours later.

So what is Graham Linehan's secret? No real clues from The IT Crowd Manual', the doc which, at 10pm, forms the centrepiece of this celebration. What he's done seems simple: in both Father Ted and The IT Crowd, the classic sitcom formula (a hermetically-sealed world, characters who never learn lessons) is equipped it with self-awareness and real warmth. Oh, and the perfomances are magnificent - Richard Ayoade, Chris O'Dowd, Katherine Parkinson and Matt Berry are all charmingly present and correct and all seem rightly proud to have been involved in such an adored show.

If you tune in an hour before the doc, you'll get another chance to catch the hour-long special that closed the series earlier this year; from 11.05pm, we'll be finding out which episodes the show's fans and creator hold dearest. A Christmas Eve treat.

Exclusive: Chris O'Dowd stars in deleted scene

Fresh from the final episode of The IT Crowd last week, you may well be wondering where you can get your fill of Chris O'Dowd. Well fear not, because his great HBO and BBC show Family Tree is out on DVD now!

Ever considered the erotic potential of a barista's frothy coffee machine? Since the hopelessly inept IT department first flickered into life in this peerless comedy, the world has moved on. Back in 2006, the careers of Chris O'Dowd, Richard Ayoade and Katherine Parkinson were just booting up. And the all-pervading influence of the internet was still cranking up. But now, as the trio log in for this last-ever one-off special - featuring a spooky guest turn from Noel Fielding - the faces of Roy, Moss and Jen are famous, and there's a glint of the Black Mirror about the tangles they get into as viral videos, micro-bloggers and hactivists up the levels of paranoia.

Those familiar with Graham Linehan's hyperactive Twitter presence will be unsurprised by some of the subjects tackled in this the hour-long finale of his geeky, live audience sitcom: embarrassing viral videos, anonymous hacktivists, the NSA. It's a testament to his fine plotting skills and mastery of tone that such dark fare is seamlessly woven into the shows usual cartoonish set pieces and Seinfeldian verbal tics ('small-person racist', 'emotionally artistic').

Along the way, our hapless trio of Moss (Richard Ayoade, whose new film The Double features original Reynholm Industries head honcho Chris Morris, fact fans), Roy (Chris O'Dowd, fresh from BBC2's Family Tree) and Jen (Katherine Parkinson, thankfully less shrill than in previous series) do battle with tiny baristas, pepper spray, women's slacks and, er, a van with breasts.

Naturally there are plenty of laughs to be had, especially from Matt Berry, on gloriously silly form as lunatic boss Douglas Reynholm.

But it drags in places and the same old problem remains: the main characters elicit no warmth. As a result, when the IT Crowd depart their basement lair for the last time this viewer was left feeling strangely unmoved. Adios then, nerdlingers: gone neither with a big bang nor a whimper.

Radio Times review

The synthy title music buzzes us in for a last, joyous visit to the basement of Reynholm Industries. Since the last series in 2010, Chris O'Dowd has gone A-list in Hollywood and Richard Ayoade's film-directing debut (Submarine) won him a Bafta nomination. But for some of us they'll always be Roy and Moss, socially inept IT engineers saddled with a vague, desperate manager (Katherine Parkinson) whose talent for making things spiral into wrongness rivals their own.

For this extended, goodbye special, it's business as usual. Playboy company boss Douglas (Matt Berry) is thinking of appearing on The Secret Millionaire, Roy is struggling to keep a new girlfriend ("She said that emotionally I'm on the artistic spectrum..."), and he and Jen are caught on a viral video that upsets the internet. "We p****d off the internet, Jen!" wails Roy. The internet is coming to get us!"