Tom Hollander

Olivia Colman and Tom Hollander on Rev.

With none of the otherworldly airs or whisky-soaked vices of stereotyped TV priests, this thoughtful comedy shows the day-to-day reality of a religious calling: 'It's f***ing hard!'

Rev: Third series will be its last 'for the time being'

Rev star Tom Hollander has revealed the hit BBC comedy will take a break after its third series, due this spring.

Ambassadors is the low-key acerbic comedy drama set in a British embassy in the fictional central Asian country of Tazbekistan. The first episode had some tonal problems as it struggled to establish whether it wanted to be funny or clever, and often failed to achieve either.

But it was OK, and at times mildly amusing, which already put it out in front of most of the competition. That said, you expect better than occasionally mildly amusing from David Mitchell and Robert Webb, who maintained a level of demented brilliance in Peep Show for years.

And in the second episode they were indeed much better. Some of the improvement could be attributed to a wonderful turn by Tom Hollander as an obnoxious prince who stumbles luxuriously around the globe as a trade envoy creating international crises - a great comic idea, and one wonders who could possibly have been its inspiration.

More than that, though, it was a matter of characters falling into place and the place finding its character. Webb is oddly convincing as a cynical idealist assistant to the ambassador, and Mitchell shows a conflicted steeliness and sensitivity that goes some way beyond his stock gift for the florid rant.

The writing, by James Wood and Rupert Walters, was sharper too. Several plot strands were neatly combined, and there was an impressive resistance - as shown with the Prince Mark storyline - to succumbing to the obvious. Rather than bash you over the head with jokes, it takes a more diplomatic approach. And I don't care what Steve Coogan says about him, Mitchell has persuaded me on this one.

In this amusing second of a three-part comedy-drama, British ambassador Keith Davis (David Mitchell) and his No 2, Neil Tilly (Robert Webb) face the prospect of a "diplomatic" visit from a member of the royal family (Tom Hollander). What follows is very funny, but as much as it is a modern political situation (it's set in "Tazbekistan", a former Soviet republic) with some amusing satirical points (bribes for contracts, royal faux pas), this is basically Mark and Jez in suits, performing some effective but ultimately traditional comedy.

Tom Hollander (Rev.) steals the show from under the noses of David Mitchell and Robert Webb tonight, stiffening his upper lip as minor British royal Prince Mark. A stroppy chap, whose lot in life is to serve as a trade envoy, the prince is summoned to Tazbekistan by Ambassador Keith (Mitchell) who's trying to schmooze another commercial deal out of the Tazbeks - and they do love a good royal. But, as it turns out, the petulant prince has a few surprising diplomatic talents up his sleeve.

Rev. star Tom Hollander effectively steals the show from under the noses of the two leads when he guests as Prince Mark, a minor royal who's been invited to Tazbekistan to grease the wheels for another trade agreement.

Prince Mark, we learn, always travels with a 6ft ironing board carried by his loyal male assistant called Treasure.

This is the easy stuff and it's a shame Ambassadors isn't content to just go straight for the comedy jugular.

Goodness knows it's got all the right ingredients in Robert Webb and David Mitchell, while the two secret police spies eavesdropping on all their conversations are sweetly hilarious.

Instead we're asked to wade through storylines about escaped human rights protesters, enforced child labour and threats to murder women and scatter their chopped up remains in the woods.

Things like that do tend to wipe the smile right off your face.

Tonight's opening scene in which Neil Tilly (Webb) is kidnapped and a sack pulled over his head - for laughs - is an example of the impossible balancing act Ambassadors has set itself.

The British Embassy in Tazbekistan prepares for the arrival of Prince Mark, a trade envoy and minor member of the royal family. He turns out to be a spoilt, entitled berk (a great comic turn from Tom Hollander) who travels everywhere with a 6ft ironing board so his factotum can ensure the creases in the Prince's trousers are perfect.

Though Ambassadors feels a shade underwritten and falls uncomfortably between drama and comedy (that tricky middle ground is always a hard place to sit), it bowls along thanks to a sharp cast - David Mitchell and Robert Webb play the ambassador and his capable deputy, and there's a great foul-mouthed cameo from Matthew Macfadyen as their furious government boss.

And Frasier fans, watch out for Edward Hibbert (restaurant critic Gil Chesterton) as an equerry.

While last week's tepid opener failed to prove either way whether Ambassadors could make foreign affairs funny, it's case closed by the end of this direly unfunny middle episode.

Tonight sees British ambassadors Keith (David Mitchell) and Neil (Robert Webb) forced to babysit a visiting prince (well played by Tom Hollander), while negotiating oil-drilling rights with the premier of their fictional Tazbekistan. Hilarity does not ensue. Aimed squarely at fans of The Thick of It, Ambassadors delivers precisely none of the nuanced comedy and Kafka-esque scenarios.

Given the highbrow subject matter, there's an awful lot of physical daftness, including a tiresome skit in which Hollander's prince berates a blind person while - wait for it! - not realising he's blind. The central duo don't add much, either. It's as if writers Rupert Walters and James Wood had hoped the Peep Show boys would ad-lib all the funny bits, only to find out they couldn't be arsed. By the end of this, neither will you be.

If awkwardness were an Olympic event, Arthur Strong would be a gold medallist. The music-hall aficionado staggers around as if glued to an ironing board, and has to forcibly eject words as if passing a kidney stone. Like that other fully realised comic character John Shuttleworth, he polarises opinion, but to his loyal fans the Count is cryingly funny.

There are shades of Hancock this week as our delusional artiste lands a part in a radio play (the way he deflates the pseuds' corner of a read-through is delicious). As in previous weeks, the plot is small but neat. And the modern practice of injecting dramatic heft into sitcom (Tom Hollander in Rev, Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi in Vicious and now Rory Kinnear as Arthur's unfortunate new best friend) is paying rich rewards. The series has been recomissioned after just one episode - take note, Ben Elton. Long live Count Arthur!

Michael Frayn's latest novel Skios is a side-splitting comic delight, which takes in almost every sub-genre from drop-your-pants farce and slapstick to verbal jokes and a satire of intellectual poseurs. Published last year, the book was criticised for over-reliance on farce at the expense of characterisation, but this adaptation, by Archie Scottney, provides more balance to the competing elements.

Hugh Bonneville plays scientist Dr Norman Wilfred with only a little of the weary grandiloquence the actor cultivated on Downton Abbey. Wilfred arrives on a Greek island to give a speech to a cultural foundation, but his place has been assumed fraudulently by Oliver Fox, played with blase charm by Tom Hollander.

Thwarted seductions alternate with Fox's pseudo-philosophical assertions, lapped up by an adoring coterie that dare not declare that the emperor - like several of the cast - isn't wearing any clothes.

Jon Glover brings the house down with his rendition of Spiros and Stavros, two manic cabbies whose question as to the identity of their passenger - "Fox Oliver?" - is taken for a talismanic local phrase. The question of identity and mis-identity is at the heart of the piece, although I couldn't help wondering why someone doesn't whip out their smartphone and unmask the interloper.