Russell Tovey

Review: The Hippopotamus

The film adaptation of Stephen Fry's The Hippopotamus is no less an exposé of the writer's views and temperament than is his novel - Fry is brilliantly witty, unapologetically bawdy, and mercilessly cynical.

Film review: Mindhorn - acceptable in the 80s, and now

The Mighty Boosh creator/stars Julian Barratt and Simon Farnaby bring their daft and weird sensibilities to this glorious silly spoof of all those tacky, pleather-wearing '80s TV detectives you only really see now in marathon re-runs. And boy do they mine it for all the comedy that it's worth.

TVO reviews: Mindhorn

Our roving reporter, Mog, has been lucky enough to see Mindhorn twice. The first time she was so absorbed in the film she forgot to make any notes. That probably tells you all you need to know (about both the film and her). On the second run, she was able to remember why she was there; here's her review.

Film review: Mindhorn

Mindhorn is consistently laugh-out-loud entertaining.

Mindhorn review

Written by Julian Barratt and Simon Farnaby of The Mighty Boosh, Mindhorn arrives as a flawed but nonetheless amusing film. It begins and ends with a charismatic but frustrating hero attempting to save the day - an entertaining but by no means revelatory cinematic experience.

The making of Mindhorn

As we count down to the official release of Mindhorn, the new film written by and starring Julian Barratt and Simon Farnaby, we bring you the inside story of the development and making of the film, as told by the stars, cast and crew.

The last in the series finds the famous "going for an English" sketch from Goodness Gracious Me dissected by, among others, Meera Syal, who helped to create it. Then an impressive haul of celebs, including Nigel Planer, David Baddiel, Ricky Tomlinson, Maxine Peake, Diane Morgan, Russell Tovey and Josie Lawrence, discuss everything from Spaced, The Day Today and Blackadder to Till Death Us Do Part, all in Gogglebox style.

Preview: Mum's the comedy word for Lesley Manville

A bittersweet new sitcom gives Lesley Manville, the Bafta-nominated drama actress in BBC1's River, the chance to go for laughs as a widow who is trying to move on with her life. The six-part series created by the writers of Russell Tovey's comedy Him & Her appealed to Manville because she felt she was known for plying big emotional classic roles and this was a good chance to do something lighter that still had character and substance.

The Comic Strip Presents... Red Top, saw some of the brand's original cast members including Nigel Planer and Peter Richardson appear beside some new recruits. These new recruits included Maxine Peake who took the lead as disgraced News International boss Rebekah Brooks in this retelling of the phone-hacking scandal that was written like it was set in the 1970s despite its many modern references. Peake provided the narration from Rebekah's own point-of-view painting herself as a naive Northern girl even though all of her co-workers thought differently. The action played out over 75 minutes and shot at many targets including The Guardian, David Cameron's attempts to become prime minister as well as the whole phone hacking scandal itself. But despite its satirical edge, I found that Red Top was quite scattershot in its approach and the script never really hung together that well. There were some elements of the programme I liked namely Russell Tovey's turn as Andy Coulson and his relationship with a stereotypical Sun journalist played by Johnny Vegas. Vegas' kind hearted reporter was eventually revealed to be the man who exposed the whole hacking scandal and the references to the Watergate Scandal were actually quite amusing. Even though it didn't really fit into anything else in the piece, I also quite liked the fact Red Top's portrayal of Tony Blair as a new-wave hippy who'd reinvented himself as a musical God. In a lovely bit of continuity Blair was played by Stephen Mangan who'd previously portrayed the former PM in The Comic Strip's last outing. However I do feel that the negatives outweighed the positives as I found a lot of the gags a bit obvious for example Wendi Deng's drugging of Rupert Murdoch in order for her to have control of his empire. Additionally I didn't feel some of the famous faces necessarily needed to be part of the story and this was particularly true in regards to Harry Enfield's Ross Kemp whose participation in the piece was minimal at best. But my main issue with Red Top was that the central joke about Rebekah Brooks' innocent outlook on events wore thin by about the halfway point. This is a shame as I believe that Peake did a good job with what she was given but I do feel that the material let her down to an extent. Overall I think that Red Top had some interesting elements but will ultimately go down as a rather forgettable entry into The Comic Strip collection.