Steve Coogan

A double bill of Chekhov: in The Dangers Of Tobacco, Steve Coogan plays Nyukhin, a husband who should be delivering a lecture of the harmful nature of tobacco (even though he smokes). However, he keeps slipping off topic, telling the woes of his life, his regrets, yearnings and the misery inflicted by his domineering wife. In The Proposal, Mathew Horne is a nervous hypochondriac who has come to ask his neighbour's hand in marriage. However, he becomes embroiled in a petty squabble with the neighbour (Sheridan Smith) and her father (Philip Jackson) which threatens his life.

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Most famous for the BBC comedy series Knowing Me, Knowing You..., and I'm Alan Partridge, Steve Coogan's fictional comedy character has been enjoyed by millions of people for nearly 20 years.

A successful season of short farces by Anton Chekhov draws to a close with a double bill. The Dangers of Tobacco is a monologue in which the hen-pecked Nyukhin (Steve Coogan) is forced to deliver a lecture on the dangers of smoking by his domineering wife. Instead, Nyukhin digresses to bemoan his lot and complain about his "petty, evil miser" of a wife. Better is The Proposal, a witty take on marriage. It finds wimpy hypochondriac Lomov (Mathew Horne) seeking the hand of his neighbour Natasha (Sheridan Smith) from her father (Philip Jackson), until it all disintegrates into a bout of one-upmanship.

After tonight's penultimate episode, devotees will have watched two and a half hours of the comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing lightly fictionalised versions of their real selves as they joke their way around an uneventful culinary tour of the North. This may sound like TV's answer to a large dose of Tuinal, but somehow the two men have managed to create something that's genuinely funny. Tonight's instalment takes them to the Yorke Arms, Harrogate, and contains one of the most surreal Woody Allen impersonations you're ever likely to hear.

The Trip (BBC2) got a thumbs-down in its first week, with many unable to see the point of sending Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon up north to eat and drink themselves silly while trying to outdo one another with their impressions. Well . . . the point is that it's one of the funniest things on TV. Yes, it can get a bit too cute at times, but the blurring of real and scripted identities gives the comedy real edge. The highlight this week was Brydon asking Coogan how it felt to have a career in nosedive after massive success early on; Coogan's reply was that it was better than always having been a mediocrity. I'd say it took a lot of guts on both their parts to leave that in.

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Steve Coogan, fretful, vain and self-absorbed, thinks he might have met the female photographer who has arrived to take his picture somewhere before. This kind of thing is always a worry to the comedian, who tells his agent, "They [people in general] remember meeting me, but I don't remember meeting them." It's another corking instalment of Michael Winterbottom's funny, acute improvised observation of the odd, frequently jagged friendship between Coogan and Rob Brydon, his travelling companion on a northern road trip reviewing restaurants. Brydon is the more appealing, doing impressions during a difficult dinner with a peevish Coogan, his agent and said photographer. There's a brittleness to the fictionalised (or is it?) Brydon/Coogan relationship that gives The Trip its delicious edge.

We'd like to apologise for ever being rude about Steve Coogan. This and his recent Partridge on t'net things have made us fall for him all over again.

Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan are comedians of sufficient calibre that this series, in which they play versions of themselves on a restaurant-reviewing tour of the Lake District, was always likely to be funny. Four episodes in, it is revealing depth too. They eat at Hipping Hall in Lancashire, where they are joined by Coogan's assistant Emma (Claire Keelan) and a Spanish photographer, Yolanda (Marta Barrio). Coogan and Brydon revive the battle of celebrity impressions they fought in the first episode, amid increasing sexual tensions. "Is there a condition in Spain of Autistic Impressionist?" Coogan asks Yolanda, of Brydon. Brydon responds by quoting Alan Partridge at Coogan. "I'd quote your own stuff back at you," replies Coogan. "But I can't remember any of it."

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