Bleak Expectations

Oh deep, deep joy. Mark Evans's comic homage to Dickens and 19th-century literature is back for a second volume as Sir Philip Bin, inventor of, er, the bin, continues to look back on a life that has been an endless progression of trials, setbacks, and conveniently placed cliffhanger endings, where adventure has followed him like a dog follows a man with bacon trousers and lamb-chop underpants.

His evil nemesis, Mr Gently Benevolent, dead at the end of the first series, is resurrected, à la Mary Shelley, to exact vengeance on his ward and his friends. There's no point trying to follow the plot, it would be like trying to explain a Monty Python sketch to someone with a humour bypass. Enjoy spotting the references, the rich language and the great rolling vowels from Richard Johnson as Sir Pip and some great ham carved by Anthony Head as the villain of the piece.

Volume Two of Pip Bin's adventures in the merry old land of Dickens pastiche. The splendid cast make the most of highly wrought lines. Marriage, says bluff Sir Phillip (Richard Johnson), the grown up Pip dictating vivid memoirs to his son in law, should be like a boxing match, dangerous, occasionally painful and with absolutely no touching below the belt. The school he attended was St Bastard's which he later tore down and rebuilt as St Lovely's. A storm is brewing like a pot of angry tea. If such jests appeal, they abound here.

Last August a six-part comedy series began on Radio 4 that captivated most of those who heard it - and the people who didn't like it were just plain wrong. Written by Mark Evans, Bleak Expectations was a wonderful pastiche of Dickens - the two novels cannibalised for the programme title for a start - as well as other Victorian costume dramas, spiced with surrealistic devices such as underwater squirrels and a raft made up of trained tuna. Evans worked on the admirable principle of throwing so many jokes at the listener that even if they missed, some most would get through and, at times, listening to it was exhausting.

And now it's back. One doesn't want to spoil the tension by detailing any aspect of the plot but those who feared that we had seen the last of Gently Benevolent because Anthony Head, who played him, had more glamorous parts to play on TV need fear no longer. Richard Johnson again plays the elderly Sir Philip Bin, and Tom Allen his younger, accident and grief-prone self, while Geoffrey Whitehead plays all six members of the sinister Sternbeater family.

Chapter Three, incidentally, even has a guest star - David Mitchell. When the greats of modern comedy queue up to take part in your show in any capacity, however small, you know you're up there with The Muppets and Extras.

Written in the style of Dickens after one too many gins, Mark Evans's lively parody, starring Anthony Head and Celia Imrie, sends up the Victorian novelist. We are amused.