Justin Chubb

For pure imagination, there's currently little to match Chris Bran and Justin Chubb's sitcom about the parochial island vaguely inspired by their native Guernsey. This week, the ineffectually autocratic Arbiter Maven tries to stop residents from celebrating the festival of Nacken. They ignore him, sneaking off to the Moosic tavern for a night of revelry, with entertainment provided by Master Croog and Rex Camalbeeter. Trouble ensues, however, when a certain someone is awoken. Rob Brydon guests.

Radio Times review

This is the one the fans have been waiting for. It's the festival of Nacken so, ignoring Arbiter Maven's edict to take their Nightly Bye pill and sleep in peace, the residents hit the Moosic Tavern for a Dionysian all-nighter.

Inspired by Sky's smart decision to package up all the songs from series one into a music special two years ago, creators Chris Bran and Justin Chubb deliver a whole episode of catchy, weird sing-along folk. It's safe to say the pair, who write the series in a room full of musical instruments and switch constantly between script and song, own a copy of The Wicker Man.

Amid all the strange duos played by Bran and Chubb is guest star Rob Brydon as the beefy, Springsteen-esque Rex Camalbeeter. His song Female Badger will stay in your head for a week.

Now is Threesday at Tidetime Ten after Noon Day Gush on the unique comedy isle of Jinsy, where we find Arbiter Maven hankering after a shiny pendant bestowed upon star pupils by girls' etiquette teacher Miss Penny. Dame Eileen Atkins is the sparkling talent in tonight's guest spot, joining comedy genii Justin Chubb and Chris Bran as the daily whirl spins around them, tonight featuring a singing obituary for those who succumbed to a dodgy quiche. It's a big 'woof' from us.

Radio Times review

Eileen Atkins is this episode's celebrity guest, playing the head of a girls' finishing school that Arbiter Maven (Justin Chubb) wants to infiltrate, so he can get one of their nice silver pendants. Before long he and Sporall (Chris Bran) are in party dresses and pigtails, learning how to work a fringed umbrella - but the school has a dark and silly secret.

As usual, the irrelevant songs and sketches provide the biggest laughs: a sung obituary for the victims of a bad quiche, an ad for psychotropic chewing gum, and folk singer Melody Lane with the plaintive ballad I Really Really Really Really Really Really Really Really Really Really Really Really Really.

Radio Times review

Arbiter Maven's official duties are banal - as this peach of an episode opens, he's judging a contest to find Jinsy's best bucket with a face drawn on - but at least they're not usually dangerous. So when a fortune-teller predicts he'll be assassinated during a sunset duck-impersonation ritual, he takes action.

He can't skive it, since if he doesn't appear, tradition dictates he be relieved of his duties and replaced by a duck. So he finds a doppelganger, who unfortunately turns out to be a fairground lag who behaves like a cross between Old Man Steptoe and Sid Vicious. A My Fair Lady parody ensues, with Cronenbergian overtones and a superb double performance from Justin Chubb.

In the Moosic Tavern, elderly duo Retch & Hoik make a welcome return to the stage. Their composition Deborah is the sort of song the Undertones would have written if they'd been around in the 1920s and had known a transvestite plumber.

A welcome return of the surreal comedy set on the fictional island of Jinsy. In the opener of this double bill, Arbiter Maven (Justin Chubb) is due for his Follication Ceremony, but his vanity gets the better of him as he uses a hair potion whose growth properties rage out of control. Stephen Fry guests as Dr Bevelspepp, relishing the rich dialogue, full of "herbal unguents" and suchlike. In the second, in which the island's bookkeeping is thrown into crisis by a racism scandal, Ben Miller appears as both the chief accountant and his daughter.

Featuring a talent competition judged by a dog, a truly hair-raising chase sequence and guest turns from Stephen Fry as a luxuriantly locked hair doctor and Ben Miller as a busty accountant's daughter (and her dad), life in Jinsy is as wonderfully bizarre as it was first time around. So it's a warm welcome back for Justin Chubb and Chris Bran's inspired mix of crackers characters, singing obituaries and catchy tunes. Top of the Jinsy Hit Parade in this opening double bill are the skiffle-tastic Was It You? and torch song Vegetable Tricks - and you also get to see what Greg Davies looks like in a skirt, in case you'd been wondering.

Stand by your tesselators for series two of the surreal sitcom. Fans of its lunatic thatch of The Wicker Man and Mighty Boosh will be pleased to know its formula is unchanged: crazy tale interspersed with beautifully crafted diversions.

To the uninitiated, This Is Jinsy is set on a fictional island, isolated in behaviour, religion and technology from the rest of the world. Parking meter-style tesselators spout vaguely sinister pronouncements about clothing, food or furniture, and entertainment takes the form of a talent contest presided over by a dog called Sandy.

The butt of nearly all the jokes is Arbiter Maven (Justin Chubb), a ludicrous popinjay whose disastrous follication ceremony in the first of this double bill leads to some hairy, Doctor Who-style horrors. And it's his more intelligent assistant, Sporall (Chris Bran), with his brown 70s suit and luxuriant 70s hair, who gets in most of the jibes.

This Is Jinsy may be the very definition of cult, but it's one that attracts Big Names. Stephen Fry is in the opener as a hair-museum curator, Ben Miller plays a feral accountant in the second episode; Eileen Atkins and Derek Jacobi will pop in later in the run.

Tracee Henge's Unwinese weather forecasts are especially fine, and the mad songs are as MP3-friendly as ever.

Justin Chubb and Chris Bran interview

As series two begins, we talk to the men whose strange little creation attracts guest performances from the likes of Stephen Fry, Olivia Colman and Derek Jacobi.