Newfangle

Thoughtful, inventive comedy by Adam Rosenthal and Viv Ambrose. Newfangle (Russell Tovey) is one of a tribe of humans at an early, pre-verbal stage of development. Picked on by the alpha male (Hugh Bonneville), hopelessly in love, looked down on by his mother (Maureen Lipman) who prefers his brother (Gabriel Vick), Newfangle is a thinker and one day, wishing to express his thoughts out loud, he invents language. Then people start using it for things he didn't intend. Soon prehistory turns out to quite a lot like life anywhere, anytime. But funnier.

I love this. I love everything about it - from Russell Tovey's aping of the lowly hominid of the title who invents language to express his unrequited love and his protests about always being beaten up by the alpha male, to Adam Rosenthal and Viv Ambrose's gloriously scrumptious and clever script. Set in the primordial mud, a group of apes on the brink of evolving into humans grapple with those things that progress entails. And yet, their hierarchies and obsessions seem awfully familiar and modern. Probably coming to a TV series near you. Og me if it doesn't!