Eddie Marsan

As Carrie Fisher proved years ago, AA can be ripe for black comedy. And so it provides the setting for Love in Recovery (Radio 4), a brilliant six-part comedy drama written by Pete Jackson. Each of the 15-minute vignettes unspool like manic Canterbury Tales, offering a set of soliloquies built around the awkward weekly meetings of disparate characters.

The first episode saw Fiona (Rebecca Front) unload her tale of shallow excess and isolation in the banking world. "I always thought that you can't have a problem when you're drinking with friends but ... everyone's your friend when you're drinking," she pointed out. Episode two finds Julie (Sue Johnston) giving an unwaveringly powerful portrait of a woman, who attempted to find happiness at the bottom of a glass after her husband of 40 years left her ("He went off with the cleaner who ironically turned out to be a dirty bitch"). Eddie Marsan plays the needy group leader Andy (memorably described as "serial-killer nice"), who is constantly offering the participants biscuits ("they're from M&S"). The series feels sharp and fresh, its realism partly derived from writer Jackson's real

Radio Times review

"If there's one thing recovering alcoholics aren't short of it's stories," says writer Pete Jackson. And he should know, as this inspired and inspiring sitcom comes from his own experience of being thrown into AA meetings with a truly disparate group of people and then finding that it's more than a problem with drink that binds them together. The fact that Jackson is working with one of the finest comedy casts on radio for years helps as well.

The previous story centred on the aggressive snob Fiona, played by Rebecca Front (be sure to listen on iPlayer if you missed it). This story belongs to Julie (played by Sue Johnston), a woman who did not start drinking, or really living, until she hit 60. Paul Kaye, John Hannah, Eddie Marsan and Julia Deakin are the rest of the players and the series is set to become a classic.

I hope that Radio 4 makes much more use of Jackson over the coming months. He's a comedy writer with talent and a heart.

Bold, bright, original comedy by Pete Jackson with a sparkling cast. Bold? It's set in a weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Bright? It's recognisably real but not self conscious about it. Original? It's honest about its characters. Tonight we meet Fiona, a banker who despises everyone se4lse, has only come because her employer made her, says she makes more money than the rest of them put together. Sparking cast? Fiona is played by Rebecca Front, Sue Johnston plays a housewife, John Hannah a journalist and Eddie Marsan is Andy, who runs the group.

If Paul, the last Simon Pegg/Nick Frost movie, was a self-indulgent journey into the outer realms of nerdiness, their latest collaboration is aimed squarely at those without an intimate knowledge of the Star Wars movies.

A crowd pleaser, this is a sci-fi comedy for everyone. Twenty years after a teenage pub crawl through their hometown, Pegg rounds up his old buddies (Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan) for a re-run.

But while reminiscing, they learn that the place has a severe case of the Stepfords.

The film contains plenty that men approaching middle age will relate to and the laughs never dry up with Pierce Brosnan, who plays one of their former teachers, an absolute hoot.

This warm coming-of-age comedy set in 1966 stars Gregg Sulkin as a geeky 12 year-old who wants his bar mitzvah to be a huge party. Problem is, his parents (Eddie Marsan and Helena Bonham Carter) have scheduled it for the same day as the World Cup final (which, of course, without a hint of irony, England reach).

Walking the Dogs, part of Sky Arts' Playhouse Presents series, was a fictional reimagining of the encounter between the Queen and Michael Fagan, the man who broke in to Buckingham Palace in 1982 and may or may not have sat on her four-poster shooting the breeze until help arrived.

Emma Thompson took the role of our monarch, perhaps mindful of the peculiar reverence that automatically comes an actor's way these days when they put in a half-decent portrayal of a royal (Kate Winslet's Extras advice that "you're guaranteed an Oscar if you play a mental" perhaps needs updating).

Her interpretation wasn't literal - the accent a little less cut glass and, in a cotton nightie rather than twin set and Barbour, the iconography reduced - but Thompson captured that singular steeliness without froideur that defines our perception of the Queen. Her exchange with Eddie Marsan's Fagan - here a decent, everyman type pushed to the brink by marital breakdown - was convincing, though the tension was dulled by the fact that we know everything ended tamely enough, blunting Marsan's shifts between meek and menacing.

Overall, there were few wildly original ideas in play and the script at times over-egged the parallels between an ordinary bloke trying to hold it all together and the duty-bound monarch, but then it didn't pretend to be a grand philosophical exchange and its gentle humour was endearing ("You'd never be able to just take off without being recognised, what with the stamps," Fagan observes). What it did very well though was pinpoint why it's easier for many of us to identify with the Queen than with, say, an equities trader from Goldman Sachs. Whatever you think about monarchy in the abstract, nobody could deny that life must be deeply restrictive for a modern royal.

Amid all the hullabaloo of the Diamond Jubilee this gentle drama takes a more oblique angle on the Queen. Imagining the conversation that took place when an intruder broke into the Queen's bedroom at Buckingham Palace in 1982, the smart script draws out the simple humanity of the woman beneath the crown as she debates love, life and freedom with her unexpected guest.

Emma Thompson is magnificently regal, and the interplay between her and Eddie Marsan's nervy intruder is spellbinding. But sometimes the spell is broken by scenes of Russell Tovey's jocular footman walking the dogs - unnecessary additions to a pitch-perfect two-hander.

Here we have Emma Thompson slipping into HRH's slippers for this gently irreverent short drama, inspired by the real-life 1982 incident when intruder Michael Fagan broke into the royal bed chamber and stayed for a chat.

Eddie Marsan, one of the best character actors on British TV, is superb as Fagan, while Russell Tovey pops up as a cheery footman.

A largely forgotten footnote in a 60-year reign, the early-morning visit paid by Michael Fagan to Elizabeth II in 1982 is here turned into a showcase for Eddie Marsan and Emma Thompson, perfectly cast as the amiable but potentially volatile Fagan and composed but emotionally distant Liz. The pair make the sight of monarch and man-from-the-street chomping dog biscuits feel entirely natural , while Thompson's understated delivery as she alludes to her husband's dalliances rescues the sort of confessional that might have looked contrived or even comical on the page. Russell Tovey's Awol security officer breaks up the pace without adding much beyond a little context. But amid a sea of hyperbolic hymns of praise, this makes for a stately counterpoint, gently irreverent but still largely respectful to both parties.

In 1982 Michael Fagan broke into Buckingham Palace and got into the Queen's bedroom. At the time reports suggested Fagan and the Queen had had a conversation, although Fagan has denied this. Helen Greaves's film imagines a conversation that an intruder (Eddie Marsan) might have with the Queen (Emma Thompson). The situation is absurd but within in it Greaves brings out a naturalness in the Queen as she shares her thoughts on happiness, marriage and love with her intruder - while munching on a dog biscuit.