Tobias Menzies

The Circuit review

Sharon 'Catastrophe' Horgan and Dennis Kelly have some dark fun with the quintessential middle-class institution.

One sitcom that we at The Custard TV have been passionate about over the past few years was BBC4 nursing comedy Getting On. So the fact that two of its writers and stars, Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan, have reunited for another BBC Four show was cause for excitement among several members of the website team.

Whilst Getting On was all about gentle comedy, similar in a way to BBC4's recent hit Detectorists, Pepperdine and Scanlan's new offering Puppy Love is a lot broader. The fact that one of the first episode's recurring jokes is a dog that likes to eat his own poo tells you just how broad the humour is. But that's not to say that Puppy Love doesn't have as much charm as Getting On, with Pepperdine and Scanlan still having the awkward chemistry that they shared in their previous hospital sitcom.

The main focus of the sitcom is Nana V (Scanlan); a notorious dog trainer who runs her own school and also aids the police in capturing strays. As a carer for her grandson, Nana V eventually comes into contact with the straight-laced Naomi (Pepperdine); a youth worker with an unruly pooch of her own. Naomi eventually signs up for Nana V's class but almost instantly clashes with the uncouth trainer particularly due to their shared affection for widower Alexander (Tobias Menzies). I felt that, as performers, Pepperdine and Scanlan played to their strengths with the former playing a stickler for the rules and the latter portraying a more free-and-easy character.

Their scenes together are definitely where Puppy Love is at its best and this is partly because a lot of the minor characters are underwritten.

Whilst it probably won't top the brilliance of the aforementioned Getting On, Puppy Love is still a promising comedy that provides a sufficient amount of laughs thanks mainly to the efforts of its two leading actresses.

From the geriatric ward to the life of the dog trainer - that's the leap attempted here by Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan, writers and stars of the fine Getting On. This sitcom introduces us to Scanlan's penurious dog trainer, Nana V, and Pepperdine's bureaucrat Mrs Singh, and watches their worlds collide. Tobias Menzies is the recently widowed owner of a misbehaving king charles cross, but with the main jokes deriving from his animal's fondness for eating faeces, this may struggle to match the team's high standards.

Radio Times review

This is a joy. Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine's follow-up to their BBC Four hospital comedy Getting On centres on a dog-training class in the Wirral. Scanlan plays power-tripping dog-handler Nana V with the company slogan "For all your dogging needs". She takes a shine to widower Alexander (Tobias Menzies) whose fluffy king poo is a "muck muncher". Her rival for his attentions is Naomi (Pepperdine), a harassed charity worker with an uncontrollable lab and a wayward teenage daughter.

A gentle comedy with superb character studies and several laugh-out-loud moments.

Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror (Channel 4) satirical dramas are fast gaining a cult status. Not all succeed, and some are unwatchable, notably the opener of his first series, where the prime minister had sex with a pig. But this follow-up series has, generally, shown more nuance than the first.

Last night's closing instalment introduced us to an interactive cartoon bear, Waldo, who, in the manner of Ali G, did interviews with real-life people. He tangled with an almost equally caricatured Tory party candidate (Tobias Menzies), whom Waldo proceeded to stand against in a by-election. As a mockery of the deeply compromised ideals of modern politics - people who simply hated politics could now vote for Waldo - the satire worked.

This was because Brooker didn't over egg it, at least not until the end, which descended into a hammy dystopian vision of Waldo becoming a means of universal mind control. But before that final five minutes, Brooker didn't let Waldo actually win the by-election, and he made the comedian controlling the bear utterly reviled by his own actions - "He's not real! He doesn't stand for anything!" He also gave the Tory one rather good line: "If that thing is the main opposition then the whole system looks absurd. Which it may well be - but it built these roads." The message that we may complain about our politicians but they're all we've got scored a bleak bulls-eye.

When failed comedian Jamie Salter (Daniel Rigby) channels his personal and professional frustrations through Waldo, the aforementioned bear he voices, and unleashes his contempt on an unsuspecting politician (Tobias Menzies), he unwittingly captures the prevailing mood of public disaffection. With a by-election approaching and his backers keen to secure a series for Waldo, the stars are aligned for a paradigm shift in electoral politics.

The most successful instalments of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror have taken latent concerns about techonology and society, infused them real dread and then sent them spinning off in entirely unexpected directions. But The Waldo Project, which closes this second series, springs no such surprises: the execution of the concept is strangely simplistic and linear, while enough jokers get elected these days to make even a blue animated bear running for government barely worth a raised eyebrow.

Another blisteringly dark satire from Charlie Brooker, this time tackling a very serious subject: rising public disenchantment with mainstream politics. In The Waldo Moment, a lonely comedian (Daniel Rigby) is propelled into the limelight when the provocative little interactive cartoon bear he voices on TV tangles with a politician (Tobias Menzies) live on air. When the incident goes viral, the entire political process begins to look dangerously absurd. It's not a bad stab at dystopian drama, although it's not quite Orwell.

Vicki Pepperdine's fantastically annoying consultant Pippa continues to steal the show in Jo Brand's tragicomic sitcom. Whether she's lusting pathetically after Tobias Menzies's dashing database man or referring to groups as 'gents' regardless of their gender make-up, she leaves impenetrable jargon, small-scale chaos and widely felt irritation in her wake. Nor does Kim (Brand) reap the benefits of lending Den (Joanna Scanlon) a sympathetic ear when the latter starts to play the pregnancy card at ever opportunity. Hilary, meanwhile, is still lurking like a bad smell, even by the standards of ward whiffery in your average hospital. It's another effortlessly underplayed but very telling slice of NHS life: incisive and making its points at the same time as making us laugh - not an easy trick to pull off.