Stephen Fry

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.

If you've ever failed to work out the precise purpose of QI, it may help to think of it as in some respects a kind of televisual equivalent of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. The show's very pointlessness, unless you're someone with ambitions to bore for Britain on arcane knowledge, is a great part of its charm. Anyway, this year's Christmas episode finds Stephen Fry posing questions on the theme of ice to Brian Blessed, Sean Lock, Ross Noble and Alan Davies.

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...

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.

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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.

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