Julian Rhind-Tutt

Dave Allen at Peace review

Unlike the comedian's monologues, this biopic lacked a punchline or point.

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Around 20 years ago, the comedian-turned-actor complained to Gaiman that there weren't enough horror movies with black leads; Anansi Boys was Gaiman's attempt to write one, though his idea for a film script instead became a novel, and the horror came laced with comedy.

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From the surreal quirks of Sue White to the stammering awkwardness of Dr Alan Statham, we've rounded up some of the best bits below...

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A last request to scatter their best friend's ashes leads to some surreal and startling moments on the road.

Green Wing reunion for the junior doctors strike

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10 people you almost didn't recognise in Black Books

Nina Conti as Bernard's true love, Green Wing's Julian Rhind-Tutt as the adventurer/author Fran falls for, Peter Serafinowicz's deep voice, Johnny Vegas as the sleazy landlord, or Rob Brydon as Fran's new boss. Did you notice these...?

You can still revisit every episode of the innovative, critically acclaimed sitcom following the often surreal lives of the staff at the East Hampton Hospital. Stars Tamsin Greig, Stephen Mangan and Julian Rhind-Tutt have achieved much since.

Radio Times review

Art for money's sake drives the farce forward in the penultimate episode of the upper-crust comedy. The choleric Lord Hannibal Didcot, played with a deep and convincing signature growl by John Sessions, thinks the canvas of a roly-poly popsie he bought from Clarence is a fake, and he wants his money back. His rumbles fall on deaf ears, since Clarence is busy posing with the Empress for a visiting American artist, Vanessa Polk (Daisy Beaumont), and Freddie is trying to shift a painting of a horse.

If the regular cast look just slightly bored in their gilded Wodehousian cage, Julian Rhind-Tutt brings proceedings to life. His return as the rakish Galahad, with his lightly devilled schemes and willingness to educate Freddie in the ways of the heart, is as welcome as any visitor to the great house could be.

Radio Times review

Lord Emsworth is anxious. He suspects there's going to be some sort of "porcine subterfuge from Stinker" and he's right. Sir Gregory plans to hypnotise Empress so she stops eating. But Connie has more pressing concerns, namely some very indiscreet memoirs written by their rakish brother Galahad Threepwood (Julian Rhind-Tutt).

She orders the hapless Freddie to intervene even though, as she tells him, "If brains were dynamite, you couldn't blow the fuzz off a peach." It's the usual entertaining piece of nonsense with everyone hamming it up madly - apart from Empress the pig, who gives a nicely understated performance.

It has been a long march for The League Of Gentlemen's Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith since their original (very original) TV series in 1999. With each subsequent venture they have scrambled farther over the top. Inside No. 9, a series of one-off plays each taking place at a different address starting with 9, represents a retreat to firmer ground.

Last night's debut was much less fantastical than their last series Psychoville, free of prosthetics and cross-dressing. It dealt, as per, with incest and abuse, but in the manner that Alan Ayckbourn might. The Greek ruled that plays should take place over a single day in a single place. Sardines occurred over half an hour in a single wardrobe. It occupied a wall in an outsized family house, the scene of uptight daughter Rebecca's engagement party. Childhood momentum had propelled her and brother Carl (Pemberton), a man barely out of the closet and about to enter a wardrobe, into a game of sardines that no one wanted to play.

Katherine Parkinson's Rebecca was a superb study in congenital dissatisfaction, about to marry a man whose previous lover is not only still on his mind but in the wardrobe. The whole party ends up in there, including the dull, quiet one (beware the dull, quiet ones, they are usually the writers' surrogates). It is Carl, though, who outs the elephant in the wardrobe, a sexual assault on a child by his bullying father: "I was teaching the boy how to wash himself!" responds the father.

Anne Reid, Julian Rhind-Tutt and Anna Chancellor must have so enjoyed getting dialogue in which each sentence was minutely crafted for them. My favourite line may even have come from Timothy West as the patriarch complaining at a transgressing of sardine rules: "This isn't hide-and-go-seek". Was that posh for "hide and seek" or a unique verbal corruption?

Sardines was a disciplined comedy, but a little bit of discipline, as one of the League's perverts might say, never did anyone any harm. Save for the Tales of the Unexpected twist, I loved it.