Steve Coogan

Based on Chris O'Dowd's experiences growing up in Ireland in the Eighties (and filmed in the town he grew up in), Moone Boy is - theoretically at least - a slightly risky proposition in some respects. For one thing, it exploits a private nostalgia for a public audience (and nostalgia can easily get self-indulgent). For another, it employs a lot of child actors, which can be tricky when it comes to comic delivery. In practice though Moone Boy is entirely lovable, one of those comedies that you actually feel a slightly better person for liking.

The comedy is centred around Martin, a young boy growing up with three unrelentingly scornful sisters (Trisha, Fidelma and Sinead) and taking refuge in doodled cartoons and the comforting presence of an imaginary friend, played by O'Dowd himself. Martin is bottom of the pecking order at home and not much higher at school, but he has a resilient can-do perkiness that appears to carry him through (and which can, if one's absolutely honest, sometimes be a tiny bit off-putting). If the comedy was only about him it wouldn't work anything like as well (the alter ego device doesn't deliver as big a pay-off in laughs as you might expect). But it diverts in quite unexpected ways. In the first episode, for example, a run-in with the school bullies triggered a lovely running joke about Irish manhood. Confronting the father of the bullies, Martin's dad is startled to encounter a paragon of sympathy instead of a brute ("Oh no! They're awful aren't they?"). He then finds himself enlisted to a secret self-help group for the town's patriarchally challenged.

The comedy of childhood is nicely done, too. Faking a love letter to his sister as part of a complicated deal to enlist the protection of the school's tough guy, Martin searches for the highest praise he can think of and comes up with "you smell nicer than crisps". But it's the sense of the family and community around him that really makes the thing work. In the second episode of the opening double-bill, Martin's mother came to the fore, campaigning with other women in the town to get Mary Robinson elected to the Irish presidency. "I won't vote for her for President," says one of the women they canvass, "but I'll vote for her to be the President's wife." And Steve Coogan - whose company Baby Cow makes the programme, appeared in a very funny cameo as a notoriously gropey local plutocrat. It's sweet-natured, fresh and absolutely not by-the-numbers, and if you want to bully it you'll have to get past me first.

Martin Paul Kenny Dalglish Moone is the most life-affirming delight to have hit our screens in a long time. Played with gap-toothed genius by young David Rawle - actually he doesn't have a gap-tooth but the charm of the writing somehow makes you think he does - he's the amalgam of every well-intentioned, bright, troubled 12-year-old you might have been lucky enough to meet, and somehow manages to span every shade of the above category, from Thomas Turgoose's darker character in the Shane Meadows things, via every Roddy Doyle 12-year-old, ever, to Nicholas Hoult's Marcus in the more glucose-rich About a Boy.

Which is possibly to imbue Rawle's success with heavier pretensions than the writing would ever affect: Moone Boy is, essentially, a piece of fun. But what fun. Written by Chris O'Dowd and Nick Vincent Murphy, it's the tale of Martin Moone growing up in Boyle, County Roscommon, in the teeth of 1989 - we're told this by the scrolling title in the first scene, along with the nugget: "Chance of rain, weirdly low." So far, in Boyle, so Doyle, and this is not so much of a bad thing, as Martin copes with bullies, his mother's feminism, his sister's bras, broccoli boiled until it turns white, and the like, though it has (so far) stopped short of a horse in a lift. Where this is lifted superbly is in the appearance of Martin's thirtysomething be-beanied "imaginary friend", played by O'Dowd, who appears as a one-man Greek chorus, with banjo, to offer Martin the worst advice imaginable at every turn; and the occasional animations as we are taken inside Martin's head and reminded of the vaulting imagination you're stuck with by virtue of being 12 and clever.

It is surreal, within decent limits, and it is derivative, but I think the derivations are happily if tacitly acknowledged; musically, certainly so, as we get stings from Grange Hill, Mission: Impossible, Raindrops Keep Fallin', etc. There are grand twists, such as the disenfranchised, underemployed menfolk - including Martin's lovely dad Liam and the bullying twins' father - meeting up for ostensible poker schools or fishing trips (none of them own fishing rods, or even a pack of cards) but instead to drink and moan, with their damp-eyed remnants of manliness, about the impossibility of all their children. If the opening two episodes, also featuring a forgivably OTT cameo from Steve Coogan, are representative, there's a granite-solid winner here, sculpted with charm, knowingness and a canny ability to lift from tradition while delivering fresh unpredicatability at every turn. Sky has been waiting for a return on its huge investments in new comedy; and of course Ireland has been waiting too long for anything to even approach Father Ted: early days, but I think that if these are boxes which needed ticking, and the boxes could somehow be painted glass panels awaiting some pebbles from a cheeky 12-year-old, then what we're hearing here is the happy sound of breaking glass.

Malcolm Tucker may have been back in The Thick Of It on BBC2 last night, but the comedy highlight of the week was Sky1's new Friday night delight Moone Boy.

It's a warm, nostalgic Irish tale starring Chris O'Dowd as Sean Murphy, the imaginary friend of 11-year-old Martin Moone, who is brilliantly played by David Rawle.

But guest star Steve Coogan stole the show early as Francie Feeley, a rich, loud-mouthed, hard-drinking big shot with a reputation for being rather too friendly with the local ladies. Hardly much of a stretch for Coogan, you might say, given his own past. But hey, those Irish accents can be quite tricky to pull off sometimes.

The pigeon-holers have really had their work cut out for them with Chris O'Dowd's acting career.

Its varied highlights so far have included roles as Roy in The IT Crowd, a frustrated Victorian writer in The Crimson Petal And The White[/u] and, most recently, Hollywood heart-throb status in ­[i]Bridesmaids.

Now he's going back to his home town of Boyle, County Roscommon, to play the ­imaginary friend of 12-year-old Martin Moone (David Rawle). Co-written by O'Dowd, if Moone Boy's nostalgic ­innocence reminds you of anything, it's likely to be Kathy Burke's Walking And Talking which also started life as one of Sky's Little Crackers series a couple of Christmases ago.

Launched with a two-parter, episode one is utterly stolen by Simon Delaney, who plays the father of two very nasty school bullies, while episode two follows Martin's mum's campaign to get Mary Robinson elected as Ireland's first female president.

But it also features an ­unforgettably skin-crawling cameo from Steve Coogan as fishmonger ­"Touchy" Feeley.

And we love the show's theme tune from Irish punk band, The Sultans Of Ping FC.

As befits his imaginary friend status, O'Dowd takes a bit of a back seat in terms of screen time, but it seems he's got another hit on his hands.

Last year Chris O'Dowd became Hollywood's unlikeliest heart-throb after a star turn in the comedy Bridesmaids. Since then he's been rubbing shoulders with the likes of Brad Pitt and Clint Eastwood, and could be forgiven for glossing over his unglamorous beginnings. Instead he's co-written a comedy about them.

Delightfully old-fashioned without tipping over into nostalgia, and full of madcap characters, Moone Boy is based on the actor's childhood in a sleepy Irish town in County Roscommon. O'Dowd, whose former claim to fame was cult sitcom The IT Crowd, plays the imaginary friend of 12-year-old Martin Moone (the adorable David Rawle). Egged on by the questionable advice of his invisible pal, poor Martin spends his days devising ingenious but ill-fated plans to thwart the school bullies and his three moody teenage sisters.

Look out for a cameo from Steve Coogan as a fabulously sleazy philanthropist in the second episode of this double bill.

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The kind of arty programmes it was sending up are so far up their own luvvie backsides they are almost beyond parody. So we were treated to an hour of Steve Coogan being clever and pleasing his ego, rather than being funny and pleasing his viewers.

As a cheeky plug for his latest book it worked a treat, though. No wonder Coogan went to Rupert Murdoch instead of the Beeb this time.

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After last's week's welcome Partridge Pilgrimage, Steve Coogan gives us another one-off special, this time parodying the kind of quietly deferential book shows that pepper late-night arts schedules. Open Books is 'Norfolk's foremost forum for lovers of literature' and Alan, sporting a necktie, tweed and floppy hair, has his memoir to promote. No prizes for guessing he needs little help from his interviewer (played by Look Around You's Robert Popper) to dig himself into ever-sizeable holes as he tries to act the literary colossus.