Eileen Atkins

Simon Amstell: Carnage review

There's no doubt that Simon Amstell's Carnage is a film with a very heavy message.

Carnage, review

Simon Amstell's first feature-length film is not only hilarious, but puts a highly convincing case forward for veganism without once being preachy.

Rewind: Psychoville revisited

A third season of Inside No. 9 arrives on our TV screens this month, so let's take a look back at its creators' previous comedy venture, Psychoville.

Preview - Vicious: A Year

ITV doesn't produce many sitcoms, but when they do they tend to pull in the viewers. Most TV critics may not be fans of Vicious, Benidorm or the revived Birds of a Feather, but the public like them.

A return for the Cornwall-based comedy-drama starring Martin Clunes as the medic with a personal life so chaotic it could figure as a metaphor for the NHS itself. With Louisa still taking time out from their marriage, the curmudgeonly doc is considering therapy with Aunt Ruth (Eileen Atkins). However, his plans for self-improvement are thwarted when a local lifeboat training exercise runs into trouble. Meanwhile, Al struggles to get his B&B ready for its first guests.

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.

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.