Toby Stephens

Review: A Day In The Death Of Joe Egg

Ensemble acting of this quality is rare enough at any time, but it's the best cast you'll currently see in a comedy in the West End, and may make you wonder what all the noise and capering is about in higher profile shows.

Don't miss it. Makes you laugh, makes you think. Makes you realise Stephens is one of our finest.

Toby Stephens and Claire Skinner to star in Joe Egg

Peter Nichols's 1967 play A Day in the Death of Joe Egg will be revived at Trafalgar Studios in the West End.

This most "Marmite" of current sitcoms ends its second run tonight with the love/hate gulf still intact as bumbling detectives Jack (Toby Stephens) and Georgina (Miranda Raison) lock horns once again. This time a violent heist at a family-run jewellers introduces them to an unfamiliar world of avarice and glamour, and while Georgina is seduced by the prospect of romance, Jack is distracted by an unexpected request from his soon-to-be-wed brother.

The silliness steps up a gear into high-camp mode as murder detectives Jack Armstrong (Toby Stephens) and Georgina Dixon (Miranda Raison) are temporarily transferred to the missing persons unit. There, the disappearance of a Lycra-wearing husband, and suspicions that his wife was having an affair, convinces them to go undercover at the local gym. But with Jack putting more work into his pecs than the investigation, and Georgina flirting with the male members, they soon run into trouble.

A gender politics student is found dead in a campus library. Gender politics, eh? Bet that's a red rag to detective Jack! Bet he starts mouthing off about 'clam-diggers and rug-munchers'! Haha! And that's pretty much this one in a nutshell, as the desperately underwhelming mismatched cop-comedy continues. While Jack bizarrely attempts to go undercover as a student of post-structuralism, DI Georgina is convinced she's met her perfect man; a Brian Cox lookalike who calls her 'snookums'. Sure, it's supposed to be a breezy satire on sexual politics and political correctness - but great comic writing has as much to do with rhythm as timing; here, it's completely off - the embarrassed-looking leads Toby Stephens and Miranda Raison stumbling over the clunking, woefully unfunny dialogue. Fail.

BBC Two's spoof crime drama, recently returned for a second series, includes a character who seems a close relation to Philip Glenister's Gene Hunt from Life on Mars and its sequel Ashes to Ashes.

But rather than spitting his sexist lines out with a Hunt-like swagger, Toby Stephens's DI Jack Armstrong just assumes that all lesbians are simply waiting for his obvious charms. Miranda Raison, as his wearied detective partner Georgina Dixon, was left to remind her boss that not all pretty girls, straight or gay, pine for a middle-aged copper.

Just as in Life on Mars, Vexed offered characters that were in their own ways compelling, plus an absorbing plot. Was the girl found dead in the library murdered by the supposedly lesbian lover of her male tutor? Was it really plausible that a university so riven with Sixties gender politics still existed in the 21st century? And is it a requirement that all professors of English Literature are polo-neck-wearing Lotharios?

There were times during the hour that this viewer wished for an actor of Glenister's vigour to speak Armstrong's lines. But by about 40 minutes in, the characters seemed rather more convincing than the comic clichés of Life on Mars. That doesn't make them half as much fun, but it certainly made it a lot harder to turn off without knowing whodunit in the library.

The second series of Vexed, possibly the most irritating cop show ever known, has got under way. It's billed as a "comedy-drama police procedural", a portmanteau phrase that chills the blood. It stars Toby Stephens as DI Jack Armstrong. Jack is cool, laconic, leather-jacketed and drives an old Mercedes sports car. He's a flirtatious ladies' man. He doesn't play by the rules. He has no time for research or paperwork. For some reason he speaks with a mid-Atlantic drawl ("We're working on the assumption that he died from a bloadertha head."). To his horror, his new partner is cool, feisty, know-all feminist DI Georgina Dixon (Miranda Raison) who's a better driver than he, interrupts his poker game to check on progress, and raises a half-indulgent eyebrow at his rampant sexism. Wearing a coat zipped up to the neck, she's basically Emma Peel from The Avengers, and Ms Raison plays her with watchable spirit and aplomb.

God knows what Stephens thinks he is, but his character comes across as an 18-carat arsehole. And God knows what BBC2 is doing giving air space to this queasy, misconceived hybrid of Dempsey and Makepeace and Carry on Copper.

Vexed returned with as many faults as it had before

Offbeat crime drama Vexed returned to our screens, pairing Toby Stephens with new cast member Miranda Raison - but the only real mystery here is how the show got re-commissioned in the first place.

Cop comedy drama Vexed has returned for a second series, complete with a brand new partner for Toby Stephens' lazy, disorganised and self-regarding detective inspector Jack Armstrong. Lucy Punch leaves the cast to be replaced by Miranda Raison as DI Georgina Dixon, and I'm sorry to say there is as little chemistry between the new pairing as there was between the old. Possibly even less.

This is something of a problem when your whole series is predicated on one of those love/hate, chalk/cheese, will they/won't they relationships beloved of television producers.

It is never helpful to apportion blame, but nonetheless the fault lies with Stephens' insistence on trying to play the comedy instead of the character. What he produces is a bizarre and wholly irritating combination of Simon Templar and Swiss Tony, the car salesman from The Fast Show. He attempts loveable oaf, but manages only the second bit.