Nina Conti

Watching this new Christopher Guest sitcom is a peculiar experience. For example, the pieces to camera can look like a hackneyed device, worn out through over-use. But then, if Christopher Guest can't utilise pieces to camera from his characters, who can? For a particular kind of arch, absurd, self-aware comedy, he wrote the rulebook.

This feels like a very new venture for Guest. Not only is Family Tree his first TV project, but it's more plot-heavy and open-ended than his film work: the box of family treasures given to laconic lost soul Tom Chadwick (Chris O'Dowd) could be the passport to as much digression, misadventure and silliness as Guest and the cast fancy, as Tom follows his familial trail through Britain and America.

The Family Tree ensemble also contains Michael McKean, Nina Conti, co-writer Jim Piddock, Tom Bennett and eventually, such mainstays of Guest's films as Fred Willard. So, even if this opening episode feels slightly low-key, it seems reasonable to assume that we're in safe comedic hands.

Nina Conti: I almost wrote myself out of Family Tree

Ventriloquist jokes that watching Chris O'Dowd in the improvised Christopher Guest comedy meant she left herself with no lines.

The career of actress, comedian and, of course, ventriloquist Nina Conti is, quite deservedly, beginning to take off. Her BBC4 documentary A Ventriloquist's Story - Her Master's Voice was nominated for a 2013 BAFTA, while the sitcom Family Tree, in which she appears with Irish actor Chris O'Dowd, has recently premiered on US TV channel HBO, before it arrives on BBC2 later this year.

Yes, Nina Conti Really Is on the Radio is apparently a pilot episode, but on the evidence of this first instalment there would be no justice if a series wasn't commissioned as a result.

If truth be told, a relatively high percentage of new radio comedy rarely lives up to expectations, so it is a joy to come across a rather old-fashioned light entertainment format with enough of a modern edge to entertain contemporary audiences.

There is charm, self-deprecating wit and originality about the way Conti interacts with her puppets - on this occasion Monkey, Gran, Dog and old-time entertainer Charlie - and her special guests, physicist Jim Al-Khalili and former X Factor contestant Wagner, along with members of the live audience.

Listeners at home don't see Conti's technique, and have to settle with brief descriptions of the puppets, but none of that matters. At the beginning of the show, Monkey suggests that ventriloquism is a dead art, so it might as well make a suicide pact with another dying genre - radio. Fortunately, both seem to be blooming, and this programme proves why. Let's just hope that when a series is commissioned, the show is broadcast in an earlier time slot than 11pm.

If you think that ventriloquism, like darts, is something that couldn't work on the wireless, think again. In the first ventriloquism show on radio since Educating Archie 50 years ago, the dazzlingly talented Nina Conti brings some of her alter egos to Radio 4, including the cynical Monkey and Scots Granny (the original Granny dummy was a gift from her mentor, the late great Ken Campbell), and gives voice to puppets brought along by the audience.

Conti is a very funny woman, sometimes breathtakingly daring, but she keeps things simple for this pilot. And you'll never once see her lips move.

Archie Andrews was packed away in his box many years ago - but now, Nina Conti stephs forward to bring the art of ventriloquism on the radio back to live. Hers is an odd, slightly surreal act, but it's inventive and funny.

Review: Nina Conti, Soho Theatre

The ventriloquist gives a fresh take on an old artform.

Review: Nina Conti, Soho Theatre

Nina Conti's show is called Dolly Mixtures but a better title might have been Baggage. The vivacious ventriloquist is surrounded onstage by holdalls in which her supporting cast lurk. One-by-one they emerge during a performance peppered with comic thrills and surprises.

Review: Nina Conti, Soho Theatre

Despite the existential themes, however, the emphasis is on giggly fun rather than anything really heavy. At barely an hour, there's certainly no excess baggage.

This week's new live comedy

Previews of Daniel Kitson, Lee Camp and Nick Revell, and Nina Conti.

Nina Conti finds her own voice in new sitcom

The ventriloquist daughter of Tom Conti is in the running for a Bafta - just as her latest show premieres in the US.