Reece Shearsmith

Not even Julia Davis could rescue star-studded self-indulgence Bad Sugar, written by Peep Show duo Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong and the centrepiece of Channel 4's presumptuously-titled Funny Fortnight. The problem was the premise: a spoof of the telenovella, which, for the uninitiated, is a type of high-camp, short-form Spanish-language soap opera. Which prompts at least three questions: first, who has actually seen a high-camp, short-form Spanish-language soap opera? Second, why spoof a short-form, high-camp Spanish-language soap opera with British characters in a British locale? And finally, does high-camp, short-form Spanish soap opera not fall somewhere beside Donald Trump in the beyond-parody stakes? And so it was that, without any decent material to play with, a blue-chip cast (Davis, Sharon Horgan, Olivia Colman, Reece Shearsmith) mugged away exhaustingly. The pilot began with a fake "Previously on ..." montage, although I assume the corresponding "Next time on ..." montage was for real since a full series lies ahead. Which makes you wonder if all the good comedy commissioners have scarpered to Sky Atlantic.

The Function Room is something which I read about earlier this year and I thought sounded really good - a possible rival for Craig Cash and Phil Mealey's brilliant pub sitcom Early Doors from the early 00s. And I have to say - aside from the annoyingly loud studio audience - I liked it.

The cast was brilliant - Trollied's Beverly Rudd, The Inbetweeners' Blake Harrison, The Vicar of Dibley's James Fleet to name just a few. There was even a great late appearance from Psychoville's and one quarter of The League of Gentlemen's, Reece Shearsmith. With such a strong cast, I had a certain faith in The Function Room before it even started... and that faith paid off.

It took a while but right from the moment a disgruntled Rudd uttered the word "Bergetw*t", I found this show very funny.

I think the key to The Function Room, and something which seems to be missing from quite a few comedies nowadays, is strong characters. From a very theatrical actor (Fleet), to a passionate busy-body who generally objects to everything (Daniel Rigby, the one who plays the slightly odd flatmate in the BT ads), and to a young, outspoken couple who only seemed to be at the 'Meet the Police' meeting 'for the craic' (Harrison and Rudd).

The Function Room definitely has legs and should be picked up by Channel 4 even just as a three-part series. It's far more deserving than Verry Terry!

If any sitcom can get you to laugh out loud - properly cackle - in its pilot episode, that has to be a good sign. There were iffy spells in this script from Dan Maier, but they're overlookable. The main thing is, it delivered great moments, courtesy of the regulars visiting the upstairs room of a local pub on the evening of a "Meet the Police" event. It doesn't hurt that both drinkers and visitors are played by a remarkable cast.

If I tell you Simon Day from The Fast Show contributes a (very funny) cameo and Reece Shearsmith from The League of Gentlemen doesn't appear until two-thirds of the way through, you'll get the idea.

Set above a village pub and starring a motley crew of British TV's bit-part stars, there's a lot of goodwill riding on The Function Room to work. Comic's comic Kevin Eldon takes the lead as local bobby Tony Marks, playing the unlikely straight man in a roomful of idiots as he hosts a daft residents' meeting on home security. Naturally, the agenda is hijacked to resolve a whodunnit on the mysterious identity of the 'shit egg killer' - the local kook terrorising victims by chucking parcels of turd through their windows. Reece Shearsmith, Simon Day and Josephine Butler all take a turn at scene-stealing, but this is a conventional studio sitcom with all the traits that genre brings: gentle jokes, obvious characters and an audience always laughing harder than you are.

The Function Room is a cheerfully traditional and often very funny studio sitcom set in a pub, and starring a host of familiar comedy actors including The Vicar of Dibley's James Fleet, The League of Gentlemen's Reece Shearsmith, The Inbetweeners' Blake Harrison, The Fast Show's Simon Day (once again playing a pub know-it-all) and every-comedy-of-the-last-fifteen-years' Kevin Eldon.

The sort of uproariously gag-heavy sitcom that encourages deserved rounds of applause from its studio audience, it's definitely a step in the right direction for Channel 4, and if they have any sense - which they don't - they'll commission 
a series.

Sparky late-night comedy from Katy Wix about Ben (Reece Shearsmith), a scientist on a sub-Antarctic island doing a study of the albatross. There's another scientist on the island with him but they don't communicate, so Ben takes to keeping an audio diary. As you can imagine, there isn't much scope for social adventure on this island and Ben is not what you'd call adventurous anyway. But, in a Pooterish way, he is quite funny, even when all he's doing is losing his watch. Also starring Julian Rhind-Tutt and Alison Steadman, produced by clever Tilusha Ghelani.

The best comedy of the week was to be found over on CBBC, where series four of Horrible Histories made its debut (confusingly, BBC1 is currently showing series two).

Based on the cheerfully bloodthirsty books by Terry Deary and Martin Brown, it plays a bit like Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time, if you replaced the visiting professor of history from Queen's College, Oxford, with a talking rat making jokes about wee.

There have been plenty of bloody revolutions featured in Horrible Histories, but the team's most recent coup was to reunite The League of Gentlemen for the first time in a bronze age. Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith turned up as craven Hollywood execs keen to panel-beat the messy lives of historical figures into award-bait biopics, and while Gatiss's American accent was pretty duff, the bickering spark between the three gentlemen remained.

Recruiting the league should not distract from the tireless efforts of the core cast, particularly Jim Howick, who has matured from being an off-model David Mitchell into a gifted comic actor in his own right. But ultimately, the highlight of this first salvo of new shows was a prancing Charles Darwin explaining the ch-ch-changes of evolutionary theory via an exquisite David Bowie pastiche. Horribly good.

Interesting fact: in the late 1630s, as part of the war effort against the Scots, womens' urine was collected from church congregations for use in the production of gunpowder. This is grist to the mill for Horrible Histories, back on CBBC for a fourth series. And isn't that Steve Pemberton, Mark Gatiss and Reece Shearsmith, AKA The League Of Gentlemen, joining in the fun? Which just goes to show how much credibility HH enjoys these days.

Why did The League of Gentlemen choose to reform on HH?

Find out why Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton and Mark Gatiss are working together on the popular kids show.

Reece Shearsmith: I play psychopaths or the everyman

Often obscured from view as TV's most grotesque characters, Reece Shearsmith reluctantly takes off the masks.