Matt Berry

Channel 4's Funny Fortnight is delivering such a rush of promising pilots you don't envy the boss who has to choose between them. I'd say for volume of belly laughs, this is the pick of the bunch so far, a slapstick, surreal take on artistes and agents in London's theatreland. Matt Berry (The IT Crowd) has combined forces with Arthur Mathews (co-creator of Father Ted) and plays hapless actor Steven Toast. The scene where Toast does an audition in a prison visiting room is good but better is the Soho voiceover session where he has to deliver one word. Again and again.

Ever since The IT Crowd began its hiatus, we've been missing the braying buffoonery of Matt Berry's mighty Douglas Reynholm. So it's good to have Berry back reprising something vaguely resembling his Reynholm chops, this time in the form of Steven Toast, a struggling fortysomething actor performing in a play so unspeakably offensive he's often attacked by members of the public. Elsewhere, Toast auditions in a prison for the racist producer of TV drama Summer Time Murders and upsets the agoraphobic with whom he lives. Written by Arthur 'Father Ted' Mathews, Toast of London is far from the finished article. But any pilot that sees an agonised Berry spending hours on a voiceover part which simply involves bellowing the word 'yes!' before breaking into song probably deserves at least one series.

IT Crowd star Matt Berry gets to be booming and absurd once again in this highly promising new sitcom pilot written by Berry and Arthur Mathews (Father Ted, Big Train) and showcased as part of C4's Funny Fortnight season. He's actor Steven Toast, who regularly pops up on the London stage and in classy TV dramas. But when we meet him when he's committed a major career faux pas - by starring in a West End play so outrageous it has left critics and the public utterly appalled.

My pick of C4's Funny Fortnight is Arthur Mathews and Matt Berry's sitcom pilot about an actor (Berry - Douglas Reynolm in The IT Crowd, but a revelation here) whose career sinks after appearing in a vilified West End play. It's as expansive and surreal as you'd expect from the creator of Father Ted, and I loved the audition (for a director in jail for Holocaust denial) in a prison visiting room.

We really are through the looking glass here, as Toast Of London is yet another promising sitcom pilot. Co-written with Father Ted co-creator Arthur Mathews, it's a winningly silly vehicle for Matt Berry from The IT Crowd, and follows a farcical day in the life of a successful West End stage actor.

Yes, it finds the one-note Berry delivering the only performance he can - a bombastic, bawdy, swaggering ham with a voice like vintage brandy - but I can't deny that, with a busily gag-strewn script such as this, he exploits his limited strengths to the full. Not to be outdone, the whole cast - including the great Geoffrey McGivern, last seen in Dead Boss - deliver similarly broad performances, and the whole thing is so relentlessly daft it's hard to resist its rambling charms. More please, C4!

A strong new one-off sitcom created by Father Ted writer Arthur Mathews and The IT Crowd's Matt Berry, who also stars as Steven Toast, legend of stage and screen. Having been a success for years, Toast is on his uppers after taking the lead role in a controversial West End play. Eager to get his career back on track he lets his London agent (Fiona Mollison) convince him to audition for a popular TV drama - the only problem being that the producer is in prison. Enjoyably bonkers, with a good supporting cast including Robert Bathurst and Tracy-Ann Oberman.

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Eight weeks into her term and with her lawyer unwittingly working against her and fiancé entirely intentionally seducing her sister, Helen still labours under the misapprehension that people on the outside care about her when it's really her fellow inmates who are willing to put themselves on the line for her. Although Top Dog's newly defected but long defective posse prove to be of limited use as she resolves to fight her own cause. Some crafty sight gags and game performances (especially Jennifer Saunders in the Matt Berry role of the psychologically suspect big cheese) aside, Dead Boss is still pulling its punches a little, lacking the iron-fist-in-velvet-glove smarts of Porridge while pulling back from the sort of genuine depravity that could really mark it out. Enjoyable enough, though.

Izzard and Carr added to Secret Policeman's Ball cast

The full cast for this Sunday's Secret Policeman's Ball has been unveiled, with Chris O'Dowd, Matt Berry, Jimmy Carr and Eddie Izzard joining the line-up.

Matt Berry: 'replacing Chris Morris was daunting'

Matt Berry has admitted that it was a daunting prospect to replace Chris Morris in The IT Crowd.