Steve Coogan

To celebrate BBC2's 50th anniversary, the channel exhumed an hour of so-called hidden treasures from The Comedy Vaults, including un-aired pilots, cult classics and first television appearances from comedy legends such as French & Saunders, Steve Coogan and Billy Connolly. There was even rare archive footage of Harry Hill with hair.

Monty Python's Eric Idle was also on hand to puncture the general air of self-congratulation, suggesting BBC2 should actually be charged with crimes against humanity for losing or wiping so many tapes containing classic comedy episodes and performances.

One tape the station would have done well to lose featured the band Madness, starring in an eponymous sitcom written for them by Ben Elton and Richard Curtis. It would be hard to pick out one band member for opprobrium, as they were all so dreadful.

Radio Times review

The unlikely but lovable sitcom winds up its second series in reflective mood. There are more smiles than belly laughs as Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan's Italian travels reach Naples and they are joined by Steve's son Joe and his pregnant PA Emma.

But before the others arrive, Steve and Rob have a moment at some catacombs stacked with skulls ("It's like being at one of your gigs..."). Steve trots out the "Alas poor Yorick" speech from Hamlet and the references to a dead jester ("Where be your gibes now...?") leave Rob looking distinctly troubled.

As usual, on the surface The Trip is about seafood, wine and Roger Moore impressions; underneath it's something else altogether.

The Trip to Italy: worth the return journey?

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's food-fuelled journey through Italy has an undercurrent of despair beneath the impressions. Would you join the pair on future trips?

Exclusive clip from The Trip to Italy DVD

Need an extra helping of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's brilliantly tasty gastronomic tour of Italy? Then wait no longer. The DVD of their latest series, The Trip To Italy, is out next Monday, but just to whet your appetite here is one of the previously unseen extras from it in which affable but-not-quite-as-affable as his TV persona Rob Brydon persuades Steve Coogan to do an impression of former Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock as they cruise through Tuscany.

Radio Times review

At the beginning of this episode I started to think I might have had enough of comedians trading impressions in Italian beauty spots. By the end, I was completely converted again. The series always hovers on the edge of nothingy, self-indulgent banter, but it always saves itself and delivers terrific belly laughs alongside unexpected little shots of melancholy.

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are at Pompeii, wearing appalling shorts (Coogan's are those baggy, halfway-between-knee and-ankle ones) and reflecting on the disaster there. By the remains of one victim, in a display case, Rob does his "small man in a box" voice and it feels crass; but then it shades into a lovely illustration of how he struggles to take anything seriously - he's a prisoner of his own comic riffs.

That undertow of sadness only adds to the comedy, which this week covers Humphrey Bogart, Frankie Howerd and, briefly, Ken Bruce.

Coogan & Brydon send Alanis Morissette up the charts

One of the more surprising new entries in the UK albums chart on Sunday was Morissette's debut album, Jagged Little Pill, which appeared at No 40. It seems reasonable to assume this is the result of her music appearing in The Trip to Italy, playing on the car stereo as Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan drive from nice restaurant to nice restaurant.

Radio Times review

The relentless, competitive maleness of The Trip to Italy is leavened by the arrival of Coogan's chirpy PA Emma and Spanish photographer Yolanda, who are in Rome to do a photoshoot with the boys.

The quartet have romantic history, as anyone who saw the first series will know, and there are some tender flirtations. But the group are easy with one another as they explore the lives of doomed poets Keats and Shelley.

Of course, impressions are never far away and when someone mentions Sicily, Brydon launches into his Marlon Brando/Godfather in a riff that turns into an extraordinary little scene about Jimmy Savile.

Of all the episodes so far, this feels closest to self-indulgence, but it's hard to sniff at anything that features Steve Coogan doing Robert de Niro as a foul-mouthed Frankenstein's monster.

Have you been watching ... The Trip to Italy?

Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan's mockumentary sees the comedians impersonating Michael Caine and Roger Moore to humorous effect - but it's their take on their own personas that is most compulsive viewing.

Lots of priceless moments and lines in The Trip to Italy (BBC), including the real Steve Coogan being a sort of fictional (although probably pretty real) Steve Coogan, being Roger Moore, being Alanis Morissette: "And I'm here to remind you/ Of the mess you left when you went away" ... hahaha. It's more melancholic this time round, and funnier. I think it's the best thing on TV right now.

Radio Times review

The comic riffs and bickering are lower-key this week. We start with Rob Brydon waking up in bed next to the blonde girl from the last episode, the one on the yacht, and we gather from the expletives he's not best pleased with himself. Perhaps that helps things take a mournful turn, as he and travelling companion Steve Coogan reflect on Shelley's funeral pyre and death generally.

In one of his extended flights of fancy, Rob imagines Steve on his deathbed, so incapacitated he can't even grope his attractive nurse. As if to retaliate (and there's a lot of that) Steve later reflects on his "semi-justified reputation for being something of a lothario".

But over and above the nicely observed riffs on ageing and celebrity there are, of course, the impressions: this week Steve reads the guide book as first James Mason and then, brilliantly, Neil Kinnock. Plus, "Roger Moore sings the very best of Alanis Morissette".