Kicking The Habit

A comedy so gentle that it wafts through the airwaves like a will-o'-the-wisp, never touching the sides of your brain.

Christopher Lee's Carmelite friars are back doing what they do best, making inoffensive little puns about requests from rich men to bless their asses and braying for all creatures great and small. At pains to point out that they are not monks who shut themselves away from the world, these Friars like to see themselves as the 'original carers in the community'. It's a community that apparently is bothered with nothing more pressing than an organ suffering from a baggy swell box. A common complaint, you will agree.

Effortlessly performed by Roy Dotrice, the unmistakeable Martin Jarvis and Alfred Molina, it is perfect light summer fare, not too taxing and not too... well, anything much really.

A return to Christopher Lee's monastic comedy Kicking The Habit did not disappoint. Martin Jarvis' gently acerbic Prior and Roy Dotrice's somewhat deranged Brother Martin allied comedy to philosophical commentary. That tells us, if nothing else, that producing successful comedy is a complex affair.

Kicking the Habit is a new comedy set in a Kent priory. Expect wry smiles more than belly laughs as the friars have their faith tested by the likes of modern technology, ice cream and the London marathon. (Think of it as Last of the Communion Wine, perhaps)