Greg Davies (I)

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.

You may think you're not the sort of person who would laugh at a sitcom where there's a recurring joke about a character having a massive bum. Man Down will relieve you of that delusion. This week Dan (Greg Davies) gets to meet his moustachioed friend Brian's running guru, Dominic (guest star Ramon Tikaram). Dominic is very intense and masterful but also the owner of a vastly protruding backside, something Dan simply cannot ignore. Comedy doesn't get much more basic than big-bum jokes but Man Down adds such genuinely crazed oddness to the storyline, it becomes very funny.

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.

Is Man Down's Brian the coolest character on TV?

The latest episode of Greg Davies's Channel 4 comedy featured an impassioned speech that puts actor Mike Wozniak up there with the likes of Jack Nicholson.

Greg Davies's madcap sitcom scales new heights of brilliance as Dan (Davies) joins Brian's Running Club and falls under the spell of the running coach Dominic (a hilarious turn by Ramon Tikaram). A mystical guru with an unfeasibly large posterior (or "a big magic arse" as Dan puts it), Dominic takes Dan under his wing to dispense life advice, much to Brian's irritation. Elsewhere, the demented Jo finds herself homeless, and ends up camping on the side of the road, where she goes on a "modern forage".

Man Down is definitely an acquired taste, but then so was The Young Ones, and while this won't have the same cultural impact, it is packed with similarly irreverent laughs.