Simon Bird (II)

Simon Bird: I nearly died in telly fight

Simon Bird feared for his life while shooting comedy Friday Night Dinner - because it was so violent.

Video: Exclusive behind the scenes Friday Night Dinner

Behind the scenes on Channel 4's Friday Night Dinner we run into on-screen brothers Simon Bird and Tom Rosenthal, discuss making the show and get a sneak preview of the upcoming series. (As well as laughing at Simon Bird's inability to park a car, and dad Paul Ritter's amazing food spitting talents).

Simon Bird & Tom Rosenthal interview

Simon Bird and Tom Rosenthal, who plays the siblings in Friday Night Dinner, chat to TV Choice about the six-part sitcom that's back for a second series...

Video: Bird, Popper and Rosenthal talk Chickens

Simon Bird, Robert Popper and Tom Rosenthal, makers of Channel 4's Friday Night Dinner talk to The Guardian's John Plunkett about the new series, whether this is a golden age for comedy and their new show for Sky, Chickens.

The Inbetweeners: 'Movie's success doesn't make sense'

Blake Harrison, Joe Thomas, James Buckley and Simon Bird on the year they made the most successful British comedy movie in history.

Inbetweeners star Simon Bird to marry girlfriend

Inbetweeners star Simon Bird is set to get married to his long-term girlfriend.

After last week's entertaining offering from Inbetweeners boys Simon Bird and Joe Thomas, we have this less successful pilot written by Jam And Jerusalem co-writer Abigail Wilson. Three school friends - a breastfeeding mum, a bohemian type and a down-on-her-luck TV presenter - meet on a monthly basis to see fourth friend Lucy, who is in a coma. It's more upbeat than it sounds and, as Lucy becomes more aware of her surroundings, we get whimsical glimpses into her subconscious. But the performances are way better than the pedestrian script deserves.

Much like Peep Show, it's understandable that some people assume that the stars of gross-out-but-sometimes-oddly-sweet teen sitcom The Inbetweeners - Simon Bird, Joe Thomas, James Buckley and Blake Harrison - actually wrote the show, as they seem to fit their characters so well. Not so, however - that honour belongs to (Damon Beesley and Iain Morris) but Bird and Thomas are in fact pretty experienced comedy writers, having performed (and impressed) at the Edinburgh Fringe with their show The Meeting, created with award-winning stand-up comic Jonny Sweet.

For Chickens, these three have got back together and produced a properly entertaining half hour pilot in which they play the only three men left in a pretty Heart-of-England village during the First World War. They each have their reasons for staying behind: Cecil (Bird) isn't allowed in the army on account of his flat feet, teacher George (Thomas) is a conscientious objector and Bert (Sweet)... well he just finds it difficult to remember there's a war on, what with all the girls (and women, and old ladies) of the village distracting him the whole time.

There was an element of farce about this - Cecil ends up accidentally peeing on a tree planted in remembrance of a dead soldier - but as with so many sitcoms, Chickens actually works best when it's just the three leads chatting and bickering. Jonny Sweet, I think, pretty much steals the show. As a self-centred lothario, he's simultaneously incredibly creepy and massively watchable - here, as with his stand-up, it's his delivery that makes him so much fun. All the best comics can make an apparently simple word sound hilarious and Sweet is no different. Just take a listen to how he says the word 'crow'.

Comedy Showcase has a decent pilot-to-series turnover, and this promising writing debut from Inbetweeners Simon Bird and Joe Thomas looks set to continue that trend. Bird, Thomas and Jonny Sweet, best known for his role as Cameron in When Boris Met Dave, play three feckless young men who, for various, unconvincing reasons, have avoided first world war conscription. Chickens feels unfinished in places, but the performances are sharp.

Inbetweeners' fans, don't miss this, ­whatever you do. The hilarious sitcom pilot was written by and stars the programme's Simon Bird and Joe Thomas, plus their sketch show collaborator, Jonny Sweet.

The year is 1914 and as the First World War rages throughout Europe and the three of them are safely sitting out the carnage in a cottage in Kent.

They're not playing schoolboys any longer, but as the only able-bodied young men left in the village, they're despised by all the women. But Bert (Jonny Sweet), in particular, is unperturbed. He's barely even aware that there's a war going on and sees this as an opportunity to pull all the women who are left - starting tonight with a grieving widow at her husband's funeral.

His tactless chat-up line: "Aah, come here, grumpy guts!" is comedy gold. In terms of period detail, Chickens is about as faithful as Blackadder Goes Forth, which is not very, but I laughed my head off throughout this - and you will, too.

The Comedy Showcase strand, now in its third year, is a try-out for new comedies and Channel 4 is being uncharacteristically coy about whether it plans to ­commission a full series.

It won't make a decision until all of the pilots have been aired, but this is by far and away the best new comedy to come out of this exercise.

If Channel 4 can't see that already, it must be mad.