Reece Shearsmith

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.

Radio Times review

The 37th best TV show of 2011 according to the Radio Times.

Manna for lovers of the macabre - a shudder one minute, a cackle the next. Series two had no qualms about meting out grisly ends to its lead personae, at a rate of roughly one bloodbath per episode. At least psycho-mum Maureen got to appal us all with her terrifying Tina Turner karaoke before carking it. Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton invested even their vilest creations with flashes of pathos; new to this run were extreme fag hag Hattie, shackling a gay Iranian man in her boudoir, and beyond-anal librarian Jeremy Goode, haunted by the Silent Singer. Add to the brew a glam Imelda Staunton, Eileen Atkins at her most severe and a cameo from cult horror director John Landis, and this show left you scared and scarred.

Psychoville Halloween special - one and done :(

Two bits of greatness that you could always count on to grace the small screen during Halloween have been The Simpsons Halloween Special and, last year's classic newcomer, the brilliance of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's Psychoville Halloween Special. While The Simpsons has remained a staple of Halloween viewing for the past 20+ years, there is no joy in Psychoville any longer as after only two short seasons, the series was cut down in its prime by the BBC and there will be no Halloween special this year.