Mark Williams (I)

Jumpers for goalposts: 'The Fast Show' at 25

"And then, the BBC2 sketch series The Fast Show turned 25, giving a whole generation of comedy lovers a chance to reflect on the enormous impact the series, and its cast, have had on British culture ever since. Which was nice."

The Fast Show's greatest ever characters

These are the characters who were not only always hysterical but also without whom the show simply wouldn't have been the same...

Review: Early Man

Fun but forgettablel.

Tom Binns plays all the main characters in this otherwise formulaic mockumentary. In the abstract that's impressive, but how it benefits the show isn't obvious: the temptation to differentiate his creations by overegging them all proves irresistible. Tonight, Mark Williams is admitted as a wisecracking businessman, fawned over by hospital manager Susan (Binns) and befriended by chaplain and chilled-out entertainer Kenny (Binns).

Radio Times review

Much like Granville's sandwiches, the jokes are definitely past their sell-by date, but viewers don't seem to mind in the slightest that the laughs come from men wearing dresses or libidinous pensioners. Six million watched this revisit of Roy Clarke's 1970s sitcom on a Sunday night recently, more than saw Foyle's War or Last Tango in Halifax.

Arkwright's latest scheme is inspired by a visit from a travelling salesman (Mark Williams), who's flogging a soothing linctus "that also cleans your brass and silver". It makes the canny grocer realise that he needs a gimmick if he's to shift the batch of Old Mother Hemlock's Ancient Remedies he's bought.

BBC Two took the opportunity to celebrate another anniversary, twenty years of The Fast Show, by airing the sketches that the team produced for the Fosters' website a couple of years ago. The Fast Show Special aired an hours' worth of sketches in two thirty minute instalments and as ever there were some hits and misses. It's always a joy to see Ted and Ralph and their conversations about Twitter and Facebook were priceless. Similarly seeing John Actor's Monkfish being the butler on a Downton Abbey-style show was brilliantly accurate. In fact the best sketches involved the characters attempting to deal with modern day situations whether it was Ron Manager's struggles with his new chair or Billy Bleach's thoughts on smart phones. Less successful was Bob Fleming's take on The Trip and the Jazz Club segments which appeared to go on forever. I personally felt the highlights were the return of Caroline Aherne, who hadn't been part of the later series of the show, and even hearing her say 'Scorchio!' brought a smile to my face. Seeing the characters of Janice the schoolgirl and Roy and Renee after a long time away was perfect especially the fact that the former had now started an online relationship with a convict. Conspicuous by his absence this time around was Mark Williams who is obviously too busy filming BBC One's daytime output to participate in a new 'Suit's You' segment. The major problem for regular fans of The Fast Show is that they will already have seen these sketches almost three years ago and the fact that the BBC was presenting them as new programmes was a bit misleading. But, just like with Harry and Paul's Story of the 2s, it was great to see the ensemble do what they're best at and if I did have an iPhone I know I'd be downloading the Cheesy Peas app straight away.

Radio Times review

The first series of these adaptations of PG Wodehouse stories came in for a good kicking from some quarters, which seemed out of proportion considering they were enjoyable bits of candy floss and hardly Broadchurch. But viewers liked them, so here's a second helping, with Timothy Spall once again starring as pin-brained, pig-obsessed toff Lord Emsworth and Jennifer Saunders as his battleaxe of a sister, Connie.

Tim Vine, much missed after his departure from Not Going Out, takes over from Mark Williams as Beach, the clever butler. Harry Enfield guests in the first episode as the claret-nosed Duke of Dunstable, an appalling old buffer with an inexplicable antipathy towards whistling Scotsmen.

Mistaken identity. Funny foreigners. Sham marriages. Poorly domesticated animals. Class consciousness. Lashings of slapstick. To watch Blandings is to realise that PG Wodehouse's knockabout tales, for better or worse, enshrined many of the rules for the British TV sitcom. And Guy Andrews's light comedy proves a perfectly charming diversion, bowled along by fine performances (Timothy Spall is superb as the perpetually bamboozled Clarence) and the potential for farce offered by the amorous entanglements of callow young Freddie and Gertrude, this week romancing a Portuguese dancer and oafish Reverend 'Beefy' Bingham respectively. Sometimes one does yearn for a character with an IQ over ten (Mark Williams's wry butler is a little too enigmatic to count), and it's undeniably slight, but it's carried off with real charm and craft.