Greg Davies (I)

Radio Times review

In a year when a celeb seemed to pop off every week, some losses were keener than others. Rik Mayall was 56 when he died suddenly in June: nowhere near retirement, as evidenced by his TV comeback last year in Man Down. That show's bereft creator, Greg Davies, contributes to this documentary, as do Michael Palin, Lenny Henry, Ben Elton, Alexei Sayle, Tim McInnerny and Ruby Wax.

The rare footage here should illustrate how Mayall justified the over-used phrase "force of nature". He was like a child eternally refusing to grow up. That's why it was so shocking when he turned out not to be unstoppable after all.

A Christmas instalment of Greg Davies's sitcom ahead of a full new series next year, though one that will be sadly missing the late Rik Mayall among its cast. Dan (Davies) has had a tough 12 months, but he's trying to turn things around. A festive thorn in the side, however, threatens to derail his efforts with the unwelcome arrival of his Aunt Nesta (Stephanie Cole). Meanwhile, Jo and Brian have realised rather sooner than expected that a farm is really not their natural habitat.

Radio Times review

Now in its 25th year, The British Comedy Awards remains that rare thing: an awards ceremony with the potential for something unpredictable and interesting to happen. Still, some things are guaranteed: Jonathan Ross will say something deeply off-colour, making the audience "Ooh" like mischievous schoolchildren. Leading the nominations with six is Matt Berry's shouty-voiced sitcom Toast Of London, while among those competing for the King Or Queen Of Comedy award are David Mitchell, Jo Brand and Greg Davies.

Radio Times review

It's as reliably funny as a Swiss timepiece is accurate. But what if you replace one of the mainsprings in the WILTY watch? This time, there's no Lee Mack, but far from spoiling the show, the presence of Greg Davies as replacement captain brings an enjoyable new dynamic.

It's particularly good when he abuses his power and overrules team-mates Gareth Malone and Richard Osman - unheard of on this show. (That's right, Osman and Davies together at last, the Harlem Globetrotters of comedy.) The round where Davies insists he invented a private language with his sister - and has to speak it - is a joy. Also on board: Phill Jupitus and Sherlock's Amanda Abbington.

Radio Times review

Beleaguered Ken goes away for the weekend, leaving the family to run riot and the show to soldier on without Greg Davies. It plays safe with a standard frat-house/Inbetweeners story: bluntly randy Dylan (Tyger Drew-Honey) is told by his cold, beautiful classmate Zoe (Holly Earl) that she'll take his virginity if he throws a house party while Dad's absent. The influx of hungry ravers gives mystic Dale his chance to show he can run his late father's baked potato van.

Cuckoo's telegraphed plots and wild implausibles make it an uneven watch, but the good bits are great. As the cartoonish Dale, Twilight heart-throb Taylor Lautner shows he's got fine comic timing as well as beauty, the swine.

Almost two years after it began, BBC Three's Cuckoo is back for a second series. Trouble is, the two actors who formed the central romance of the show are gone; U.S comedian Andy Samberg as spaced-out hippy Dale "Cuckoo" Ashbrick, and Tamla Kari as the young British backpacker who fell for his bohemian charms and dragged him back to live with her middle-class parents in middle England.

It wouldn't have surprised me if creators Robin French and Kieron Quirke had decided to let the show die without Samberg and Kari coming back as the unconventional newly-weds, especially as series 1 ended in a satisfying way with few loose ends. Not many people have been crying out for more Cuckoo, let's face it, and Samberg fans can get their fix now he's the lead in U.S hit Brooklyn Nine-Nine over on E4. However, someone at the BBC obviously thought differently, so Cuckoo returns... and, ironically given the titular bird's thieving behaviour, has two new faces in the nest.

Esther Smith (The Midnight Beast) directly replaces Kari as Rachel Thompson, bringing a slightly geekier feel to the character; but rather than recast Cuckoo they've made the peculiar choice to kill him off (a tragic mountaineering accident, with Samberg providing vocals on a sherpa's radio), and bring in his long-lost son Dale. (I guess Cuckoo wasn't very imaginative when naming babies, and--if my maths is correct--must have fathered Dale when he was 14-years-old. Ewww.)

If you can overlook these weird changes, I'm still not sure it was worth bringing Cuckoo back for seconds. Lautner's best-known for showing his pectorals in Twilight movies, so doesn't have the comedy grounding that held Samberg in good stead. Or the same rapport with Greg Davies, as his step-mother's father. Oh yeah, that's another problem: by making Dale a blood relation of Cuckoo, it's all very yucky that Rachel and her mother Lorna (Helen Baxendale) both fancy him. If the show is still intending to be a comedy romance, at heart, this could get very uncomfortable indeed... but perhaps Lautner's character will just become more of an oddball lodger? To be fair to him, Lautner wasn't objectionable in this first episode--he just didn't leap off the screen, playing a slightly quieter character. I just wonder if drawing the Twi-hards is beneficial to Cuckoo, because at least the first series attracted discerning comedy fans aware of Samberg's work on Saturday Night Live, and with comedy group Lonely Island.

We'll have to see if Cuckoo II develops its own identity and memories of Samberg's presence melt away, but I have doubts the chemistry can be replicated. Not that the first series was a diamond, but it could have been polished with a proper return, whereas now it's back to square-one. It doesn't help that laughs were few and far between, either, but maybe future episodes will do better now this awkward transition is over...

Radio Times review

Series two of a sitcom that was billed in 2012 as a transatlantic casting coup, but turned out to be part of a domestic comic's rise to the top. Saturday Night Live alumnus Andy Samberg jetted over to play a hippy-ish American who crash-lands into an ordinary Staffordshire family. Having been overshadowed by the man playing the head of the household - Greg Davies - Samberg has been killed off, replaced by Twilight star Taylor Lautner as a second airheaded interloper.

With Esther Smith taking over as Davies's hippy-loving daughter, and a lot of silly setting up to do, this episode feels transitional. But the show's main problem is still there: Davies is funnier than the rest of the cast. And since series one went out, Man Down has shown us that his own scripts are a lot stronger than this.