Jimmy Akingbola

In the Long Run review

One thing you should be able to guarantee for any programme set in the 1980s is a cracking soundtrack. And so it is with In The Long Run, the new comedy based on Idris Elba's childhood on a South London council estate.

I talk to: Jimmy Akingbola

Now living in LA, Jimmy still makes time for the UK and his latest role is perhaps his most important to date. Here's what Jimmy said about working alongside Idris Elba in In The Long Run...

"I don't want a christening yet. I've already lost you to him." Thus Olivia Colman, with just that phrase, sets the entire tone for Rev, as she has quietly done for each of the past two series. By turns giggly, mournful, drunk, charming, ballsily defiant and utterly conflicted, she encapsulates pretty much this secular nation's attitude to 21st-century Christianity, which could be summed up in the title of a fine Douglas Adams novel (writing not about God but Earth itself): Mostly Harmless.

A triumphant return but, for a comedy, it's pretty strong gravy when you think about it, as you should. The fact that God is man's finest confection detracts not one whit from "his" essential confected goodness, and the palaces of myth serve, by and large, to do great good. Except when they get in the way of real life, or bore, or nag: and that's why Colman does such a tremendous job, refracting our every niggle with organised religion through the simple premise of being married to, and more pertinently in love with, a rev. So we share her increasing frustration at the fact that hubby, the Rev Adam Smallbone (Tom Hollander), has to open his door not just to waifs and strays but to borderline psychopaths: troubling enough when they were just the two, but the arrival of baby Katie is a delight that is slowly, delightfully, doing their nuts in.

It is also, I should have mentioned this, extremely funny. I don't think that Hollander or his co-writer James Wood have put much more than a tootsie wrong since the first series, but their writing in this latest outing becomes ever more deft, daring, even confrontational. The scene in which Mick, the splendidly grubby dreadlocked Jimmy Akingbola (carrying the most foetidly evil one-armed doll) offers to babysit, with the well-intentioned cackle: "You take your lady out for a nice night an' when you comes back, ta-da! She still alive!" mesmerised: and also spoke of poverty, race relations, child abuse and 10 other things which don't get a better outing in an entire hour of the increasing fractious Question Time. Adam/Tom's facial reaction to this charming offer was a brief masterclass in English politesse. And at his heart is not so much a crisis of faith but the full and faithful knowledge that God does not exist other than to provide the wages.

As far away from Derek Nimmo in All Gas and Gaiters, in generational terms, as it's possible to get, and hyperspace-removed from the Vicar of Dibley, as in it's funny: not only but very. And so wise. Perhaps I'm reading too much into what is, after all, a half-hour of light entertainment on a Monday night, but when I saw Adam/Tom - I cherish the believability of the character so much, they're interchangeable - standing in some yakhole of a playground pulling on an e-cigarette, he simply felt like every small man mulling over big thoughts, as opposed to every big man thinking small thoughts, ever. I don't have too much choice in the matter, but I know which one I'd rather be.

Series 3 gets off to a quite unforgettable start tonight as we witness the sudden birth of Adam and Alex's baby daughter in the back of a black cab. But what will burn this scene forever into your memory is the unlikely member of the cast who has the honour of acting as midwife.

Fast forward several months and while Adoha and Colin (Ellen Thomas and Steve Evets) are both desperate to be godparents to baby Katie there's a much less welcome arrival in the shape of two church officials.

The new area dean and diocesan secretary (the great double act of Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine) will put the future of St Saviour's in doubt. Adam (Tom Hollander) has to go all out to convince them that his church is thriving, even if it struggles to achieve even a tenth of the turnout of the nearby mosque. So he teams up with the local imam (Fonejacker's Kayvan Novak) to raise funds to pay for a children's playground.

Apart from that terrific opening set piece, Rev isn't a comedy that tends to go in for grand gestures, preferring instead for the humour to bubble up gently from the depth of its wildly assorted characters ranging from Archdeacon Robert (Simon McBurney) at the top all the way down to Mick (Jimmy Akingbola).

There's a heatwave in St Saviour In The Marshes this week and it's giving Adam (Tom Hollander) some very disturbing nightmares. One of his parishioners (guest star Sylvia Syms) is having sleepless nights for a different reason. She thinks her care home is haunted and wants Adam to perform an exorcism. Nigel, in particular is only too happy to oblige.

This is a slightly disjointed episode, but fans of Jimmy Akingbola from Holby will be very pleased to see him make his first appearance this series as Mick. He's only in one scene, but it's hilarious.

And the other revelation this week is getting to meet Adam's five-year-old god-daughter Enid (Olivia Riley). After just an hour with her and her blessed recorder (you may want ear-plugs) Adam and Alex (Olivia Colman) start to wonder whether having children of their own is such a good idea after all.