Doon Mackichan

One programme that I'm done with after the first episode is newish sitcom Mountain Goats which made its debut this week. Mountain Goats started life as a pilot episode entitled Miller's Mountain and after sampling that solo instalment I didn't feel it would see the light of day again. BBC One don't appear to have that much faith in the show as they've put it in the 10:35pm death slot in which most subpar sitcoms usually find themselves. Despite Mountain Goats not being as offensive as previous comedies that have occupied that slot, such as The Wright Way or Father Figure, there was still little merit to the show. The programme focus on a ragtag group of mountain rescue operatives led by the feckless Jimmy Miller (Jimmy Chisholm) who appears to have little authority over his fellow volunteers. Among the group is the young mummy's boy Conor (Kevin Mains), the rather slow Bill (David Ireland) and the cheerful Bernie (Kathryn Howden). The main problem I have with Mountain Goats is that the majority of the characters are so one-dimensional that it's hard to either care or believe in them. Although Jimmy is cut with the same cloth as a Captain Mainwaring or a Basil Fawlty at least those two characters had at least one quality you could sympathise with. Not so Jimmy who spends the entire episode being rude to everyone he meets and bizarrely alienating his new landlady by singing a Wham! song out loud. I have to hold my hands up and say that there were about two or three jokes during the half hour that at least raised a smile but that's about it. Meanwhile the cast struggle with their poorly written roles which is particularly evident when the brilliant Sharon Rooney has little to do as feisty landlady Jules. In fact the only member of the cast who seemed to be making the best of a bad situation was Doon Mackichan as Conor's mother. It still annoys me that BBC One still can't produce a decent sitcom these days as the channel was once the play to go to for a good laugh. Instead I sat them almost embarrassed by what I saw up on the screen which amounted to a very old-fashioned sitcom whose jokes were about as dated as its situation.

Back for a full series despite last year's pilot, this retrograde sitcom follows the antics of a group of mountain rescue volunteers in the Highlands. That it's static, stagey and not really about anything - they don't do any rescuing tonight, preferring to stay in the pub in front of the live studio audience - wouldn't be a problem if the jokes were belters. But they're half-hearted, old or just baffling, driven by some weak characterisation. Even Sharon Rooney and Doon Mackichan are made to look mediocre.

Pointless Celebrities announces comedy special

Doon Mackichan, Nigel Planer, Adil Ray, Kevin Eldon, Nerys Hughes, Jeremy Dyson and The Chuckle Brothers are due to appear in a Comics edition of Pointless Celebrities. The episode will be broadcast on September 26 on BBC One.

A double bill to launch the new series of this splendidly daft sketch comedy from The League Of Gentlemen's Jeremy Dyson. Rebecca Front returns as the ever-patient psychologist and a dazzling cast of comedy performers - including Katy Brand, Morgana Robinson, Sam Spiro, Sharon Horgan, Doon Mackichan and Liza Tarbuck - play fantastically loopy women from history. Tonight Anna Nicole Smith comes to talk about her love life, and Anne Boleyn hopes for a happy resolution in her couples therapy.

Radio Times review

Pompous actor Steven Toast's nemesis, Ray Purchase, has ratted him out to The Tax People, so he owes £250,000 and he needs to find work, fast.

But suitable jobs are thin on the ground. Even John Midsomer Murders Nettles and has resorted to poaching to make ends meet. (Yes, that really is the John Nettles in a guest cameo).

In desperation, Toast's magnificently raddled agent, Jane Plough (Doon Mackichan) suggests that her client might like to direct a stage version of Calendar Girls.

Matt Berry as Toast is at his glorious best when he launches into tirades of scene-chewing pomposity. His outrageous treatment of the Calendar Girls women ("I intend to treat these people like cattle") will make your eyes water.

Radio Times review

A clutch of idiotic, skint blokes who constantly fail to attract the opposite sex as they bumble through life is a sitcom staple. But setting them in ancient Rome is the well-worked twist for this bright, engaging and frequently quick-witted comedy that won best new comedy at the British Comedy Awards in 2013.

In this series two opener, Marcus (Tom Rosenthal) tries to win the heart of the girl next door, while flatmate Stylax (Joel Fry) has his heart set on a lady-magnet chariot. Slave Grumio (Ryan Sampson) is probably the biggest delight with some fabulously deadpan asides. There's a decent new role for Neil Stuke, too, as the disreputable husband of the lads' fearsome boss Flavia (Doon Mackichan). And nostalgic sports fans will have a treat with Rosenthal's dad Jim commentating on the chariot race.

Toast of London is a crazy new comedy about a booming-voiced thespian about town. Matt Berry (the booming-voiced boss in The IT Crowd) is as compelling as you might expect as the crazy Steven Toast and Doon Mackichan is crazy enough as his crazy agent - seen in her office last week being pleasured by a muscular unclothed masseur with his genitals pixelated. Toast's flatmate is a bit crazy and Toast has a roster of crazy girlfriends. Last week's crazy plot in which Toast (surrounded by crazy military types) foiled a plan to blow up a nuclear submarine was... well, let's say I wasn't crazy about it.

There is a contingent of comedy fans - the really knowledgable ones with the excellent taste - for whom a little-seen BBC3 show from 2006 called Snuff Box represents the peak of British television. Matt Berry, who co-starred in and co-wrote that absurdist dark comedy, set in a gentlemen's club for hangmen, also stars in and co-wrote Toast of London. So is it the second coming we've been waiting for?

Slightly less knowledgable comedy fans, with slightly less excellent taste, may remember Berry as Douglas Reynholm in The IT Crowd or Dixon Bainbridge in The Mighty Boosh, but in this he finally takes the lead, playing portly middle-aged actor Stephen Toast, a role that allows full use of his booming voice. In the opening episode it was all going well for Toast: his agent, Janet Plough (Doon Mackichan), told him he'd won an acting award from a gossip magazine after 28 years in the biz, and women seemed to find him irresistible. So what if one was on bail for attempted murder and the other throws shopping trollies in canals for fun?

Where Snuff Box blended sketch, songs and character into something brand new, this felt more familiar sitcom territory - Toast even shares a bachelor pad, Men Behaving Badly-style, with Ed (Robert Bathurst). Yet while the "sit" was traditional, the "com" definitely wasn't. When Toast's flatmate brings home a conquest, it's not Leslie Ash from next door, but the Nigerian Ambassador's daughter, who has been transformed into a Generation Game-era Bruce Forsyth by a vengeful plastic surgeon.

The Berry sensibility was also retained with melodramatic camera zooms, a musical finale and a 1970s feel (albeit now located mainly in Toast's hairdo). This doesn't entirely get the BBC off the hook - they still need to commission more Snuff Box - but with the help of co-writer, Father Ted's Arthur Mathews, Berry hasn't had to restrain his imagination. Squeezing the larger-than-life luvvie Toast into a Sunday night sitcom set-up has just become part of the joke instead.

How come BBC Four gave Georgia Pritchett's hairdressing salon comedy Quick Cuts a mere three episodes only? Whether the reason was timidity or budgetary, the show definitely deserves to be swiftly recommissioned.

Combining a traditional sitcom format with sketch-show sensibilities, Quick Cuts followed the fortunes of salon owner Sue, her family and the disparate group of eccentrics and incompetents in her employ, but with the narrative frequently punctuated by short, sharp hairdresser-client encounters ranging from the truly inane to the deeply intimate.

Some of the sitcom plot lines felt a little forced, and Sue's dodgy boyfriend Trevor seemed to have walked in off a different show altogether, but Pritchett's dialogue was a delight, the cast were terrific and anything starring Doon Mackichan is, by definition, a good thing.

The choppy sitcom ends with a strong focus on family - not surprising, given it's set on the eve of Sue and Trev's wedding. After Sue's frightful mum comes in for her wedding "do" - "Atomic Mutton" - the salon owner (wonderful Doon Mackichan) turns into a nervous teenager in front of a mysterious customer. Who is she to Sue?

Elsewhere, Marianne's (or should that be Martin's?) dad comes in for an awkward chat and Trev (Paul Reynolds) finds the most disgusting way ever of getting a wedding ring. Silly, rude and funny.