Robert Webb

It's no use trying to hold out in the face of this daft Dickens spoof. Better to abandon yourself to its rich figgy pudding of rampant silliness.

The idea is a loose relation of Radio 4's Bleak Expectations, with added visuals of London's brick alleyways, street urchins and wind-up top hats. Robert Webb plays our shopkeeper hero, Jedrington Secret-Past, whose emporium (selling treats such as hot and spicy dodo wings) and perfect family - including wife Conceptiva (Katherine Parkinson) - are hauled off by the wicked Skulkingworm (Stephen Fry) to meet an unpaid debt.

What follows involves a lot of twiddly wordplay ("Oh, fiddlesticks and violin twigs!"), sight gags, pratfalls, treacle dependency, peals of wicked laughter and a man with a goose for a hat.

My TV Christmas cracker: The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff

The Mark Evans-scripted comedy series kicks off with a truly festive special starring Robert Webb and Stephen Fry.

As the title more than suggests, this is a spoof of all things Dickensian, or rather, a lampooning of the starched-corset period dramas that British telly has always produced. Robert Webb leads as Jedrington Secret-Past, a shop owner who has his entire business - building, family and all - sent to debtors' prison on Christmas Eve. With Webb's comedy partner David Mitchell popping up, it does have the air of a sketch that goes on far too long, but there's plenty of silliness to hold the interest.

If you're a glutton for Dickens (and you'll need to be, with the BBC already stuffing its schedules with the forthcoming bicentenary of his birth), jolly spoofery abounds in The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff, which features Robert Webb as an upstanding Victorian retailer of nonsense items thrown into sudden penury by bewhiskered evil Stephen Fry in a stovepipe hat. Ah, what larks, trying to out-grotesque the master, though the irrepressible, unending fun of it can jam your parody receptors after a while.

Interview: Robert Webb stars in Charles Dickens spoof

To mark Charles Dickens's 200th birthday, Robert Webb stars in a new BBC comedy entitled The Bleak Old Shop Of Stuff. He tells the Metro more about the show...

It's never too early to start feeling festive, right? The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff might be airing midway through December, but it's the perfect show to get you in the mood. From the writer who pens the popular Radio 4 series Bleak Expectations, this Dickensian spoof focuses on a shopkeeper - played by Robert Webb. Actually, the cast is perfect: Stephen Fry, David Mitchell, Katherine Parkinson and Celia Imrie are among the stars taking part. Both silly and a period drama - should be fun winter viewing.

Robert Webb and Katherine Parkinson interview

Robert Webb and Katherine Parkinson tell TV Choice more about their roles in the seasonal spoof episode of The Bleak Old Shop Of Stuff.

Robert Webb: 'I auditioned for Nathan Barley'

Robert Webb has revealed that he auditioned for Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker's 2005 sitcom Nathan Barley.

Robert Webb: 'We'll do it for as long as they let us'

"I think the four of us sort of made an informal pact really, as soon as the second series was commissioned, that we want to do for as long as they'll let us."

Thank goodness for Fresh Meat, which has steadily been building its credentials as a comedy-drama, rather than straightforward sitcom. Last night, it was Vod's turn to do a presentation for her English seminar group, an assignment she started well (she'd plagiarized an Amazon reader's review of Midnight's Children to get underway) but couldn't quite sustain. "I never read it!" she yelled defiantly about half a minute in. "I got to the bit where the boy with a nose like a cucumber realises he can read people's minds and I thought, 'No, sorry, I'm not having this'." Robert Webb made a excellent cameo appearance as the needy geology lecturer and Oregon thrilled to the fact that Professor Shales's wife was being all sophisticated and soigné about their affair: "It's like something from a Woody Allen movie or something," she told Vod. "Yeah. Dirty old man and pretty young girl. I think I've seen that one." Its best jokes aren't quotable, though, because they come out of that strange amalgam of what the screen delivers and what the audience already knows and feels. Not just for students.