Olivia Colman

Radio Times review

Graham Norton, Jonathan Ross and Alan Carr are not going to lose any sleep if they listen to this. Jim Moir, better known as Vic Reeves, is not a natural interviewer. It's his guest, Olivia Colman, who holds the show together, using her ability to ad-lib with wit.

I love this series. I love Vic Reeves. I love Olivia Colman. It's why I chose this as my Pick of the Week. But were it not for Colman's thespian talents there are moments when tumbleweed would have blown through the studio (à la Shooting Stars). She picks up when Reeve's questions or direction of thought trails off, and yet, while he sounds delighted to have got to the end of the show intact, there are some parts where this interview is so funny it should come with its own health warning.

If Olivia Colman had to choose between a plastic hand and a hook, which would she favour? Is she any good with blood? As I said, Reeves is not your typical interviewer, but these surreal questions do encourage Colman to reveal more about herself than she would on a predictable chat show.

And so, I now know that she believes that the path to true love depends upon clutching a fallen eyelash with one's intended and making a wish. And that she can spend hours staring at pictures of men's swollen testicles (in medical books, not real life).

It's a peculiar half-hour, but one I wouldn't have missed for the world.

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Nick Frost's bespectacled antihero Mr Sloane is comfortable as a 50s throwback, but just when it's beginning to look like he'll never embrace the swinging 60s, Robin charms him out of his shell. A flashback to his birthday where Janet (Olivia Colman) presents him with tickets for a cruise makes it easy to lose sympathy with him. But then Robin, with her flicky eyeliner and San Francisco free spirit, forces him to go to a club and even dance. He's quite the natural once he gets going, in a "nervous crab" sort of way.

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Nick Frost's Mr Sloane: Best comedy of the year

Nick Frost's 1960s tragi-comedy - starring actress of the moment Olivia Colman - is Britain's answer to Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Botched suicide attempts pop up a lot in films and TV and, here, the man putting his head in the noose and kicking away the stool is Jeremy Sloane, who has lost his job and his wife all in the same day.

Coincidentally, a similar event also opens the sitcom Uncle, which starts its terrestrial re-run on BBC One tonight.

But fate has other plans for Jeremy in this six-part comedy series specially created for actor Nick Frost by Curb Your Enthusiasm producer director Robert B Weide. (Weide also directed How To Lose Friends & Alienate People, starring Frost's friend Simon Pegg.)

Mr Sloane is set in 1969 in Watford - which is just far enough from London to have missed out on the Swinging Sixties and light years away from the glamour of Mad Men.

But it all looks glorious, confident and reassuringly expensive.

Tonight's double bill sees Mr Sloane get off to a rocky start in his new job as a substitute teacher and there are scenes set in a boozer that are filled with ­realistically snappy and rambling banter.

Sloane's friends include Peter Serafinowicz as gambling addict Ross, who is at the centre of a lovely running joke about the vagaries of 1960s-style parenting, while Olivia Colman appears in flashbacks as Sloane's wife Janet.

But even this TV Bafta darling is upstaged by Ophelia ­Lovibond, as Sloane's new love interest.

With an accent that's bang on the money, Robin is a groovy American half his age with a habit of bumping into him at his most embarrassing moments.

But she finds Sloane endearing, rather than disgusting - and you will, too.

Radio Times review

In the past decade Nick Frost has gone from being Simon Pegg's bumbling sidekick to a Hollywood film star in his own right. So it's a treat to have him back on the small screen in a comedy written especially for him by Curb Your Enthusiasm director/producer Robert B Weide.

Set in 1969 in buttoned-up Watford, Mr Sloane is about a chap so hapless he can't even succeed at his own suicide. In the opening scene he tries to hang himself but crashes to the floor, bringing half the ceiling with him. He's lost his job, his wife and is prone to rose-tinted daydreams at odds with horn-rimmed reality.

Although this first episode is short on belly laughs, it goes down as easily as a glass of Babycham thanks to a tip-top cast (including Olivia Colman as estranged spouse) and its deliciously drab setting.

Fame comes at a cost it would seem as the star of Sky Atlantic comedy Mr Sloane believes his co-star has been priced out of the market after winning big at the Baftas. The Sun reports Nick Frost as joking that Olivia Colman would be far too expensive to bring back as his on-screen wife for a second series after she scored a hat-trick at the TV awards. "We could never afford her now," said Frost. "If we do a second series, we'll have to have a chimp play my wife."