Harry Enfield

Radio Times review

The first series of these adaptations of PG Wodehouse stories came in for a good kicking from some quarters, which seemed out of proportion considering they were enjoyable bits of candy floss and hardly Broadchurch. But viewers liked them, so here's a second helping, with Timothy Spall once again starring as pin-brained, pig-obsessed toff Lord Emsworth and Jennifer Saunders as his battleaxe of a sister, Connie.

Tim Vine, much missed after his departure from Not Going Out, takes over from Mark Williams as Beach, the clever butler. Harry Enfield guests in the first episode as the claret-nosed Duke of Dunstable, an appalling old buffer with an inexplicable antipathy towards whistling Scotsmen.

Blandings, series 2, episode 1 review

Harry Enfield was deliciously obnoxious as Dunstable. Throwing tantrums, eggs and insults ("Stop that whistling you disgusting Scotch peasant!") with red-faced regularity, his slapstick was so effective it was like he'd taken the pressure off the rest of the cast to make fools of themselves.

TV preview: Backchat, BBC3

It all works very nicely and while it will do Jack Whitehall's career no harm whatsoever it will also probably work wonders for his father, much in the same way that Harry Enfield's father Edward build up quite a head of steam out of being an irascible old arse when Harry Enfield made it big.

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Psychobitches (Sky Atlantic) finished its first series last night (following last year's pilot), and anyone who says television doesn't make inventive programmes any more should watch it.

Set in the office of a modern-day female psychiatrist, who is confronted by some of history's most famous, unusual or bonkers women, it is surreal, but gloriously different.

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when the idea was pitched. "We'll have Eva Braun going to see the psychiatrist, and Joan of Arc, of course... Funny? Yes, of course it'll be funny! I know - we'll have Mother Theresa too. Hilarious!"
And, unlikely as it might seem, it works.

The characterisations are as inspired as they are off-the-wall. Last night, Sam Spiro gave an hilarious rendition of Jackie Kennedy as a female version of Columbo the detective, and Zawe Ashton played a madly feline Eartha Kitt. Frances Barber's over-the-top version of Catherine the Great was annoying but Harry Enfield gave a brilliant impersonation of "Mrs Alfred Hitchcock" looking disturbingly like Mr Alfred Hitchcock dressed in women's clothes. And Julia Davis was beautifully ditzy as Mary Pickford, the silent film star. "That's seven times now," she complained to the psychiatrist, "that men have tied me to railway tracks..."

The scripts (by a team of writers) are clever, but the whole thing is held together by Rebecca Front, who plays the psychiatrist with a perfect mixture of assurance and bafflement. I know that Olivia Colman has been officially anointed as the nation's new favourite actress, but for my money Rebecca Front is up there. From The Day Today through Alan Partridge, The Thick of It and Lewis to Psychobitches, she is always excellent.

The title should be rendered with inverted commas surrounding the "magnificent". Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse comment jovially upon an selection of extreme sports stars who have parlayed YouTube notoriety into celebrity. Yes, it's a clip show, if one populated by two talents as opposed to the standard phalanx of nobodies. Unlikely to become regarded as either comic's defining work, but it should almost by definition be at least intermittently compelling - as folly, hubris and people skateboarding into dustbins always are.

Harry Enfield faces battle to turn pub into new house

'Loadsamoney' comedian Harry Enfield faces a battle with neighbours over plans to turn a Primrose Hill pub into new family-sized house.