Mark Heap

Dotty grandma arrives for dinner with her terrible new boyfriend, or "male companion" as she prefers. He's a mean-spirited old man who arrives by crashing his car into the Goodmans' front door before berating the household. Again, it's an episode that relies heavily on farce and eye-popping outrage, so it wears thin quite quickly. But Harry Landis, as the boyfriend, is gloriously awful, whether he's engaging in excruciating displays of affection with grandma ("I'm all randy") to claiming he's been abused by the entirely innocent Adam (Simon Bird). And there's a welcome, though all too brief, visit from febrile neighbour Jim (Mark Heap).

Impish family kibitzing this episode gives way to wall-to-wall haranguing, as grandma brings her new boyfriend to dinner. Flashes of Inbetweeners-style brinkmanship in what's acceptable abound, as the Goodmans are forced to appreciate the presence of an octogenarian fuck-buddy in their matriarch's life. Fans of Mark Heap will be disappointed with minimal creepy-neighbour shtick this time round. But Harry Landis's demonic suitor, Mr Morris, more than makes up for this, stealing the show - and possibly the series - as an archetype of doddering evil. If creator Robert Popper is conducting some sort of twisted experiment to find the most grotesque and misshapen form into which the traditional family sitcom can be contorted, then the final five minutes of this show are probably a bit of a breakthrough. At least a nine point five on the shudderometer.

We sit down at the dinner table with the chaotic Goodman family as Robert Popper's genial autobiographical comedy returns for a second series. Dad, the fantastically lugubrious Paul Ritter, is once again embarrassingly shirtless ("I'm bloody boiling" is his constant lament) as warring siblings Adam and Jonny (Simon Bird and Tom Rosenthal) start brawling like toddlers the minute they set foot in their childhood home. Mum Jackie (Tamsin Greig) can do little except look pained while shouting for order above the mayhem.

Mark Heap as weirdly obtuse neighbour Jim lifts us out of broad farce when he becomes obsessed by Adam's childhood fluffy bunny.

It's not on Friday night anymore. But otherwise, it's business as usual for Robert Popper's relentlessly watchable family sitcom. No real complexity here: tonight, Adam and Jonny declare open war on each other after the chilling discovery of a secret concerning a disappeared childhood cuddly toy. Jonny is prepared to go nuclear, but can Adam avert disaster and save the life of his beloved rabbit Buggy? Happily, the plot facilitates a slightly-larger-than-usual role for the brilliant Mark Heap's creepy, needy neighbour Jim - hopefully this is the shape of things to come. Elsewhere, Martin is still hapless and half naked, and Jackie remains mildly exasperated and sneakily mischievous. A welcome return - Friday Night Dinner is cannily written, nicely performed and very much the kind of show that sneaks up on you

Call the Midwife may have finished for now, but the combination of nostalgia and medicine remains potent. Award-winning drama The Indian Doctor, set in the south Wales valleys in 1964, is on a smaller scale: as the village GP, Dr Sharma (Sanjeev Bhaskar) seems to be responsible for everything from eye tests to pastoral youth care and advice on romance, and is supported almost every step of the way by his wife Kamini (Ayesha Dharker).

The new series opens with his mother-in-law Pushpa (Indira Joshi) arriving from a smallpox-stricken India and, in a piece of casting that should reap comedic rewards, Mark Heap is settling in as the very serious new vicar.

Adam arrives for dinner at mum and dad's, but things seem a little off-kilter. Dad Martin (Paul Ritter, who should be crowned a comedy king in a special ceremony) is dressed in a suit, the table is laid with flowers and "mum's posh bowls" - and there's an extra place set for dinner. Of course, it's a trap, one that Adam (Simon Bird) walks straight into when mum (super Tamsin Greig) announces that Tanya Green will be joining the Goodman family for their end-of-the-week get-together. Poor unsuspecting Adam has been set up on a date by his infuriatingly well-meaning mother and what follows is excruciating: an acutely painful succession of burps and nosebleeds from dad and inappropriateness from mum ("Give her a kiss hello, Adam"). But even these levels of raw embarrassment count for nothing when weird neighbour Jim (Mark Heap) arrives with Winston, his lugubrious dog. Winston has swallowed Jim's keys, which is the cue for a toe-curling sequence with man, beast, a newspaper and a twig. It's the last episode of Robert Popper's cheerfully silly comedy. Oh, how I will miss it. There'd better be a second series, Channel 4.

Interview: Mark Heap ('Friday Night Dinner')

If you haven't got around to watching Channel 4's Friday Night Dinner yet, then you have been missing out. The Robert Popper-penned sitcom is deliciously funny and, thanks to the legendary Mark Heap, who plays oddball neighbour Jim, it has a lovely dark and surreal edge. We caught up with Heap, whose credits include Brass Eye, Green Wing and Spaced, to chat about the show.

I love this series and I love Mum and Dad Goodman (Tamsin Greig and Paul Ritter). When the "bambinos" turn up for dinner on this particular Friday night, dad - mildly deaf and obsessed with his aged copies of New Scientist - emerges from the garage clad in a vest, shorts and cut-off wellies. "Why are you dressed like that like a sex attacker?" wonders Adam (Simon Bird). What follows is the usual collision of family in-jokes, misunderstandings and general silliness. Dad has been ordered by mum to burn his beloved magazines, but he's mapped out a ruse designed to pull the wool over her eyes. Meanwhile Aunty Val (Tracy-Ann Oberman) is on her way round to show off her mother-of-the-bride dress. I am delighted to admit that I laughed immoderately all the way through; at the gag about the mobile stuck on speakerphone; at neighbour Jim (super-twitchy Mark Heap) and his supernatural fear of his perfectly timid dog. And at dad's Join The Dots Sex Book. Don't miss.

Apart from the smatterings of mildly bad language, this Jewish take on My Family remains a surprisingly cosy sitcom for a Friday night on Channel 4.

You can't fault the cast - which includes Simon Bird and Tom Rosenthal as bickering brothers who revert to toddlerhood every time they step through the front door into the family home.

The dramas are small ones and this week a family squabble manages to break out over the colour of mum Jackie's new curtains. The bright spots in all this are Paul Ritter as the bare-chested shirt-phobic dad and Mark Heap as the oddball neighbour Jim.

Those three little words: "And Mark Heap" at the start of any sitcom are like a British Standards kitemark guaranteeing that there'll be nuggets of bizarre brilliance tucked away inside - and tonight's scene involving Jim's trip to the pub with his lager-loving dog is very odd indeed.

Another Friday night, and another borderline gruesome family dinner with the Goodmans. The hapless, girl-shy Adam (Simon Bird) faces yet another painful interrogation about "females", or girlfriends, from Dad (the magnificently weird Paul Ritter): "Don't call them females" Adam whines, "they're not corpses." Tonight batty granny visits and upsets Mum (Tamsin Greig), who's already feeling generally unappreciated, by dissing her new curtains. But the most sublimely stupid bit of the episode involves barmy neighbour Jim (Mark Heap) and his dog. This superb beast does the best drunk-acting I have ever seen on television when Jim takes him to the local pub, a ghastly hole called the Black Boy. Dogs shouldn't drink beer. Really, they shouldn't.