Peter Capaldi

This Week's Radio: The News At Bedtime

News at Bedtime was Ian Hislop and Nick Newman's dazzling satire on current affairs culture, featuring twin presenters John Tweedledum (played by Jack Dee) and Jim Tweedledee (Peter Capaldi) broadcasting from Nurseryland. You wouldn't need to be a Today aficionado to find this series a delight. There was the crooked man defending himself against allegations of corruption: "It's not a crooked sixpence John. I found it next to a stile. It's perfectly acceptable for me to claim as an allowance." The Grand Old Duke of York was on defending his military action - "You launched an ill-thought out, ill-conceived and legally dubious assault on the hill". There was the Daily Fairygraph, owned by the Brothers Grimm, and Jonathan Porridge from Beanpeace protesting against Jack's genetically modified beanstalk. All of it was pitch perfect, totally inventive and very funny.

Anyone with fond memories of Chris Morris's dearly loved news spoof On The Hour could do far worse than tune into this comic version of the Today programme penned by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman. Starring a first-rate cast of British comedy talent, helmed by Jack Dee and Peter Capaldi, The News At Bedtime is an almost hypnologic take on the conventions of a modern radio news programme, which presents streams of dreamlike absurdity with a staunchly straight face. While the content is a little silly at times, comedy fans and news junkies will still find plenty to enjoy.

The News at Bedtime (R4, 6.15pm) tries a new tack. Jack Dee and Peter Capaldi, as Jack Tweedledum and Jim Tweedledee, are argumentive anchormen in a world where Humpty Dumpty really has had a great fall. Written by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman. If you're up late making stuffing or doing wrapping here's some kitchen company.

Watch The News at Bedtime

The News At Bedtime is a Radio 4 news programme with a fairytale twist written by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman and presented by John Tweedledum and Jim Tweedledee (Jack Dee and Peter Capaldi).

As our real-life Government entered what are quite possibly its death throes, so did the fictitious government in Armando Iannucci's uproarious political sitcom. Rebecca Front arrived to play a hand-wringing minister but the focal point was, as ever, Peter Capaldi's vicious spin doctor, Malcolm Tucker. Weirdly, Tucker's sacking in the penultimate episode proved one of the saddest moments on TV this year.

The Thick Of It was comedy of the year, no contest. Well there was a contest, because geriatric ward sitcom Getting On was also a hoot. But it only ran for three episodes - there must be more, surely? - so it doesn't really count. But when it came to the sheer delirious joy of ented spleen splatting off the walls of the corridors of power, The Thick Of It's scabrous language warmed the cancerous cockles of my scurvy heart.

The fall and rise of Malcolm Tucker gave the mighty Peter Capaldi a fiesta of invectives, but it was no one-man show. Everywhere you turned, the lunacy of political spin was sent screaming through the mincer. The prize quote in the climactic episode came when one spin-crazed monkey announced: 'We're going to be triangulating to a semi-aggressive tactical grid.' Which got the only valid response possible: 'You're talking s***.'

Who needs a script? How ad-libbed shows are taking over

Ad-libbed shows are taking over the schedules - and they did pretty well at the British Comedy Awards, too.

And so the third season of the sharpest sitcom on TV effs and jeffs its way inventively towards its denouement, with Nicola Murray MP (Rebecca Front) and her party facing annihilation at the ballot box. Yet just when they need him most, resident rottweiler of spin Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) has been placed on gardening leave, reduced to lobbing popcorn restlessly at the television when Andrew Neil appears. However, even in his absence, Malcolm's still giving harassed minister Murray the heebie-jeebies - "I keep imagining every time I open my filing cabinet that he's going to be crouched in there eating a lamb shank," she groans - and sure enough, her nightmares become reality when Malcolm's offered a ticket back to the front line by an unlikely new ally, priggish blue-sky thinker Julius Nicholson (Alex MacQueen). "He is Lazarus, isn't he? He just can't die," observes Murray, ruefully. Thrillingly, the episode hints that the Opposition has unearthed its own Malcolm Tucker, a counter-spinner so fearsome that his short and unprintable nickname is whispered in hushed tones throughout the corridors of power. It seems as if everyone's tooling up for a battle royale; sparks and spittle will fly.

The political satire continues. Nicola Murray MP (Rebecca Front) needs to find a celebrity to publicise a new "Healthy Choices" campaign. But Steve Fleming, the PM's new fixer (played with diabolical glee by David Haig) has competing priorities, demanding massaged crime figures for an urgent press briefing. When Murray's team bungles both tasks, spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) is incandescent. Stuck between Tucker and Fleming, Murray can only ask, "Could you two tell me in which order and from which direction I'm going to be shafted?"

"It's like the break-up of the Beatles during the fall of the Roman Empire while Jordan's getting dumped by that bloke," said Malcolm Tucker of the atmosphere in a Downing Street much like our own. In this third series of The Thick Of It, the wizard of spin is not only losing his marbles - they were dislodged years ago - but his magical power to terrify. In an eerily controlled monologue he told Terri, the civil servant whose main ambition is to get home by 6, that he was an ex-pharaoh floundering in a Nile of s***: "But I am going to fashion a paddle out of that s***." I loved the delicacy of that verb "fashion". As Tucker, Peter Capaldi should get an OBE.