Jack Seale

Review: Black Mirror episode one - The National Anthem

Charlie Brooker's obscene satire was thrillingly daring and highly intelligent...

More small things just barely happen in episode three of Ralf Little and Michelle Terry's watery comedy. The seaside caff has a fancy new menu nobody can understand ("Lapsang souchong! Lapsang souchong!"), and there's confusion over which of the love-struck young adults will attend a pub quiz.

In between are hints that the characters would be adorable if we only knew them. The Café wants to be warm and deft, a bit like The Royle Family or Gavin & Stacey, but it's a superficial copy. Craig Cash's lyrical direction tries to add depth and ends up pvercompensating - he's got a crane and by heck he's going to use it.

It's BBC3's most successful sitcom ever, so of course it's back for series two. Writer Stefan Golaszewski's low-key, handily low-budget visits to the flat inhabited by laid-back Steve (Russell Tovey) have barely changed, with the main development being that Steve's sexy, tolerant girlfriend Becky (Sarah Solemani) has moved in, not that she's got round to unpacking much.

Interrupting their regime of toast, sex and lying about are the friends and family who bring the funnies in from the outside world. They're lazy smiles rather than belly laughs, making this a show that requires your mood to match its own - but Steve's ex Julie (Katie Lyons) dropping in, this series promises a bit of drama, too.

Some things never change for Doc Martin. The sun always shines. The people of Portwenn always bring him a supply of interesting maladies. And in the series finale he's always seen speeding past tractors in his fancy silver saloon car, averting
a crisis that's inconveniently happening out of town.

So it is tonight, as a long-term supporting character suddenly gets their moment in the spotlight via a slightly creaky personality change. At the end of a faintly disturbing but cosily predictable caper, there's a clever and rather lovely tidying up of frayed ends. You know where we're going, but it's how they get us there.

More importantly, achingly stupid PC Joe Penhale (John Marquez) who's already one of the funniest characters on telly, really ups his game when there's genuine peril about.

This Is Jinsy's greatest hits

It's Britain's answer to Flight of the Conchords - we pick our top five Jinsy songs.

The comedy pedal is still on the floor in episode two, as ignored loser Tim starts his MI5 training. His first exercise somehow earns him an unstable lodger - bad timing, because a mad family therapist has asked his evil son to monitor his every move.

A parent and child who hate each other is one of the many refreshingly brutal comic situations Spy exploits. Never mind that it makes Tim's struggle to retain custody implausible. And never mind that everyone's crazy and nothing is real, so that - like a lot of US sitcoms - you wouldn't mind missing an episode. When you're in front of it, Spy keeps doling out quick, cheap, satisfying laughs.

Tim really is a loser. As we meet him he's suffering yet another dressing-down from his nastily precocious nine-year-old son (Jude Wright), his withering ex and her annoying new bloke. He's stuck in a terrible retail job. He's lazy, nervous and accident-prone.

Tim's the character Darren Boyd was born to play, in other words, and consequently everything Boyd says and does is funny in this new comedy from relatively unknown writer Simeon Goulden.

Today, Tim's life changes as he accidentally gets a job working as an MI5 agent with licence to kill. The bumbler-out-of-water gag is a bit of an easy comedy win that could feasibly wear thin over a series - but based on the cutting comebacks and rat-a-tat timing here, it probably won't. As Tim's Secret Service colleagues, Robert Lindsay and Rebekah Staton are excellent foils for Boyd.

Galton and Simpson: sitcom will 'live forever'

The legendary writers' modern favourites: Miranda, Outnumbered and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Another biggish guest star arrives: Julie Graham memorably spent three years as Martin Clunes's screen wife in William and Mary, and here they are again, reunited. Except they're not quite, because in Doc Martin, Graham plays the wife of PC Penhale (John Marquez). That's odd, considering we didn't know he was married. It's even odder that his wife thinks he's only just arrived in Portwenn.

Meanwhile, Cornwall's worst restaurateur Bert Large (Ian McNeice) is deeper in debt than ever, a fisherman keeps fainting, Eileen Atkins desperately deserves more screen time as Aunt Ruth, and Louisa's mother is still causing trouble, above and beyond her annoyingly nomadic accent.

As for the Doc himself, an episode full of the customary, satisfying sight of him being rude to people who fully deserve it has a glimpse of warmth at the end. That it's hard-won makes it all the more affecting - Clunes is brilliant at letting those little flickers shine through.

Word of mouth is growing: This Is Jinsy doubled its audience in its second week. If you're coming in now, you've hit upon the best episode yet.

It's snowing, which is bad for shorts-wearer Arbiter Maven (Justin Chubb) even before he has to trek across country with his fearsome former teacher - a delicious guest turn from Simon Callow. Nigel Planer is equally fantastic as a madman who lives in a miniature chalet, while Harry Hill returns, in that figure-hugging coral skirt, as sensual law enforcer Joon Boolay.

Amid the nonstop gags, Chubb and co-creator Chris Bran always steal the show with their songs. Tonight they're dusty geriatrics Retch and Hoik, authors of the rousing march Put in Your Teeth. Plus, the ever-present, eight-strong Island Singers - Chubb and Bran in four different wigs and frocks, superimposed next to each other - offer thoughtful comment on the futility of working life.