Jim Howick

Radio Times review

One of the many strengths of this show is the guarantee that there'll be an entirely new, entirely brilliant comic character to enjoy in every episode, in addition to the magic kingdom's regulars. The other week the team even had the nerve to create tremendous womaniser Philip of Woolworth, then kill him off after only one hilarious scene.

Tonight there's another lothario, who lasts a bit longer as he attempts to woo Debbie (Martha Howe-Douglas): King Bernard (Jim Howick) joins her on her latest quest, but he's more interested in his planned statue of himself. The blowsy love ballad Bernard sings to try to make Debbie his queen is terrific, as is Laurence Rickard's episode-stealing turn as Chamberlain, Bernard's disgusted manservant who has long since resorted to burning sarcasm.

Yonderland does preening, benign fools as well as any comedy. But now Debbie also, finally, meets the realm's less benign fool: Negatus.

Mat Baynton and Jim Howick on Yonderland and more...

In the last of this week's chats with the cast and creators of Yonderland, here's Mat Baynton and Jim Howick...

I think the best way to start the review of this programme is with the following statement: Peep Show is better than Father Ted.

I know that according to Channel 4's Greatest Comedy Show Father Ted's is better, but it's wrong. It's merely more popular. Peep Show's funnier because of the writing, the plot devices, the innovative camera work, the quality of the performances and the darkness of the humour and characters. Peep Show may never have attracted more than 2 million viewers for a single episode, but the quality of it stands.

Peep Show returned with its usual mix of darkness and desperation, thanks to the struggling lives of flatmates Mark and Jez (David Mitchell and Robert Webb). At the start of this series, Mark is trying to get Jez out of the flat so his love Dobby (Isy Suttie) can move in. Mark's plans are so desperate; he even thinks breaking Dobby's microwave will help. Also, Mark gets a job tip from - of all people - Super Hans (Matt King), Jez decides to undergo therapy, and the health of Mark's love rival Gerrard (Jim Howick) takes a turn for the worse.

There's so much to like in this opening episode, including Jez's somewhat paranoid display when he attends his therapy session, to the horrifying consequences which result when Mark tries to prevent Isy from seeing Gerrard. One interesting plot device which seems to be sprouting is Jeff (Neil Fitzmaurice), now living with Sophie (Olivia Colman), getting a bit too close to Mark's baby son Ian for his liking...

The award-winning sitcom returns for an eighth series after a gap of two years. Starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb as a flat-sharing odd couple (as the original tagline put it, "two very ordinary weirdos") the show, written by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, has never attracted a mainstream audience but retains a dedicated cult following and deserves its reputation as one of the best sitcoms around. It is also the longest-running sitcom in Channel 4 history.

Despite the long interval, we pick up exactly where season seven left off - with Mark (Mitchell) trying to eject Jeremy (Webb) from the flat in order to install his love interest Dobby (Isy Suttie). But neither seems eager to comply with Mark's plans. In fact, Dobby is more concerned for the welfare of Mark's chief love rival Gerrard (Jim Howick) who's milking a flu attack for all its worth; while Mark's efforts to move Jeremy on by funding some psychotherapy sessions prove predictably futile. Meanwhile Super Hans (Matt King) has traded in his musical ambitions for a job in a bathroom fittings firm and suggests Mark try out for a position there too - something he's determined to go for even when tragedy intervenes.

The best comedy of the week was to be found over on CBBC, where series four of Horrible Histories made its debut (confusingly, BBC1 is currently showing series two).

Based on the cheerfully bloodthirsty books by Terry Deary and Martin Brown, it plays a bit like Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time, if you replaced the visiting professor of history from Queen's College, Oxford, with a talking rat making jokes about wee.

There have been plenty of bloody revolutions featured in Horrible Histories, but the team's most recent coup was to reunite The League of Gentlemen for the first time in a bronze age. Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith turned up as craven Hollywood execs keen to panel-beat the messy lives of historical figures into award-bait biopics, and while Gatiss's American accent was pretty duff, the bickering spark between the three gentlemen remained.

Recruiting the league should not distract from the tireless efforts of the core cast, particularly Jim Howick, who has matured from being an off-model David Mitchell into a gifted comic actor in his own right. But ultimately, the highlight of this first salvo of new shows was a prancing Charles Darwin explaining the ch-ch-changes of evolutionary theory via an exquisite David Bowie pastiche. Horribly good.

The longer it goes on, the more Reggie Perrin feels like a sad, slightly surreal drama that's become trapped in the body of an old-fashioned sitcom. Martin Clunes manages to hide the joins by making the most embittered, world-weary lines come across as faintly lovable: "Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly," muses Reggie in tonight's instalment, "Modern man gotta eat his own entrails." It's one of several lines that jump out at you. Reggie's experiment with bailing out of his misery-inducing career isn't going well: "That's the trouble with living for the moment, isn't it?" he observes. "It b****rs up the next moment." His version of living for the moment involves oil painting, therapy (with daffy Sue from Groomtech) and baking bread. Meanwhile, at Groomtech, changes are afoot, giving Jim Howick as Anthony a chance to shine.

"What a guy!" says Anthony (Jim Howick) of Martin Clunes's curmudgeonly yet likeable character, Reggie Perrin, in tonight's penultimate episode of the series. As Reggie takes up cycling to work, his marriage with his perennially preoccupied wife continues to feel the strain in this improving sitcom remake.