Steve Coogan

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.

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."

Six to watch: TV impressionists

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon have turned impersonating stars into a competitive sport. Who can rival their vocal skills?

The Trip episode 3 review

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's post-modern, understated comedy, The Trip, continues to impress.

The Trip: a stand-out stand-in?

Reviewing restaurants can be a surreal task at the best of times. What do you make of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's The Trip?

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon arrive in the Lake District on the third leg of their blokey odyssey reviewing restaurants in country houses. In what turns out to be quite a commercial for the Holbeck Ghyll hotel near Lake Windermere, the pair bicker again over dinner; Coogan, insecure and nervy, Brydon slightly precious and anxious to please. It's all terribly knowing, self-referential and, possibly, more in love with itself than is healthy. But I laughed a lot - proper laughter, too: actually out loud. You don't get that with BBC2 comedies, as a rule. Or with BBC1 comedies, come to that. Coogan and Brydon are a perfect brittle partnership. There's also a slightly tragic edge as we watch two middle-aged men needle each other ("You can't treat your entire life like a Radio 4 panel show"), while at the same time they seek some kind of affirmation. Smashing.

Johnny Vegas is perhaps someone you would not automatically associate with Anton Chekhov. Likewise Mackenzie Crook. But here they are in Chekhov: Comedy Shorts (Sky Arts 2). In this first one, A Reluctant Tragic Hero, Vegas plays Tolkachov, a man at the very end of his tether, fed up with running tedious shopping errands for his family. Crook is Murashkin, Tolkachov's mate, who should be - tries to be - sympathetic, but then gets it all wrong and adds to poor Tolkachov's problems.

And hey, it works. Vegas gets to do what he's designed to do - make a lot of noise and be miserable (he has tragedy built into his features). Crook gets to say not very much, be a bit gormless, and have a long, hollow face. Which suits him fine, too. Nineteeth-century Russia could easily be 21st-century anywhere; I guess that - the continuing relevance - is what makes Chekhov a dude. Hey, who said this column can't do serious literary criticism?

Anyway, they're quite good fun, and there are more to come, with other unlikely Chekhovian actors including Steve Coogan, Julia Davies and Mathew Horne. Bring 'em on.

Produced by Baby Cow and featuring the likes of Steve Coogan and Julia Davis in future episodes, these delicious sub-half-hour productions recall a lost age of relatively low-budget TV treatment of the classics. In the opener, Johnny Vegas is perfectly cast as the put-upon Tolkachov, who visits his friend Murashkin (Mackenzie Crook) to deliver a spittle-flecked monologue full of pathos and purgatory about his put-upon working and domestic life, only to get more, or rather less, than he bargained for, in the apparently sympathetic Crook's eventual response.