Greg Davies (I)

The more it went on, the more we came to love Greg Davies's beautifully tasteless sitcom. His character Dan may be a towering oaf of a teacher who swears at pupils, insults his own parents and exploits his friends, but we still want things to go right for him. And as it's a sitcom, they never do. Tonight, Dan tries to impress head teacher Amy by putting on a Christmas play. But his practical joker of a dad (Rik Mayall) has inaugurated the "12 Scares of Christmas", one of which is properly nasty: Hitchcock would be proud.

A certain Christmas spirit was in abundance on Man Down here thanks to Rik Mayall's demented turn as a father whose festive regimen focused solely on terrorising his son, including shoving Greg Davies's Dan headfirst into a Christmas tree and rigging his car with a rowdy seagull. That's my kind of Christmas spirit, right there. And any show which can come up with a kids' school nativity called Scrooge 3000 (sample lyric: "Look at the tasty futuristic geese/ you can't afford a goose to eat") is all right in my book.

Channel 4's sitcom Man Down has settled into a pleasingly puerile groove, and joined BBC One's hit Mrs Brown's Boys in representing slapstick comedy. Here, teacher Greg Davies gave the nativity play a contemporary twist with the nightmare robotic future of Scrooge 3,000, but it was Rik Mayall as his dad, working his way through the increasingly unpleasant "12 scares of Christmas", who stole the show - and, potentially, planted ideas for potentially fatal practical jokes in the minds of cooped-up families everywhere.

Greg Davies: I stil feel a ludicrously tall, fat man

Man Down star Greg Davies talks self-humiliation, telling people off and delivers a message for Michael Gove.

Greg Davies review

Greg Davies's show, The Back of My Mum's Head, focuses on his inability to be a proper adult.

We've seen Greg Davies play a teacher before, of course, and the workless, foul-mouthed truce struck between him and his flock here does smack a little of Jack Whitehall's Bad Education, but Man Down's shortcomings in originality are nulled by a relentless volley of gags, all at Davies's expense, and with many arriving courtesy of a brilliantly cast Rik Mayall as his sadistic prankster dad. Crude, silly and very funny.

This week's new live comedy

Previews of Greg Davies, Trevor Noah and the Chortle Book Festival.

Penultimate episode of Greg Davies's by-the-numbers debut comedy, in which he plays newly single, perennially chaotic drama teacher Dan. This week, he gets help from strait-laced buddy Brian while preparing for an unexpected date, and his dad offers him a scary insight into his own former love life. Despite a brilliant turn from Rik Mayall as Dan's father, the series has relied thus far on cheap, un-PC gags and surreal moments that don't quite reach the pandemonium of Davies's last project, Cuckoo.

Massive man-child Dan (Greg Davies) secures a date with the mother of one of the kids in his class during parents' evening. But he's so out of practice with the ladies he dragoons best mate Brian into going on a "mock date". Thanks to Dan's social tin-ear and pathological lack of charm, he has a meltdown in a Chinese restaurant that shouldn't be funny but it really is. In fact you could say that about every second of Man Down. It's puerile, silly, crude and offensive but it's so daft it's hard to resist even the twitch of a smile. And comedian Roisin Conaty is monstrously awful as Dan's brassy friend Jo, who sets up a gig for the mysterious "Mickey Two Face." Don't ask.

Only Graham Norton could ever come up with such an eclectic range of guests - global megastar Lady Gaga, actor Jude Law, comedian Greg Davies and EastEnders' Dot Branning (or rather the actress who plays her, June Brown). Who will flirt with whom, we wonder?

Lady Gaga was on the show back in 2011, dressed in an extraordinary Bride of Frankenstein-type outfit. She was last spotted in a fur mask with a gold beak on a tour to promote her new album. Tabloid favourite Law talks about his new gangster film Dom Hemingway, Davies's current sitcom Man Down (9.30pm C4) is winning him laughs and acclaim, while Brown discusses her autobiography.