The Bleak Old Shop Of Stuff

Greatest Underrated Comedy of the Previous Decade #1

Sometimes you feel a comedy series deserved more recognition, and in the last decade we had quite a few series that never quite reached their full potential, or, through no fault of their own went under the radar.

12 Days of Christmas Specials 3: The Bleak Old Shop Of Stuff

This all star Christmas special was a spin off of Radio 4 favourite, Bleak Expectations and it's a show that you need to add to your Christmas watch list!

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Some sitcoms come to a natural end after a long run. Others are not so lucky and get cut short in their prime. And then Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps runs for 80 episodes. Here are 10 of the best comedies that ended far too soon...

The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff is stuffed with plot but gets away with it because that's one of the essential gags. As a spoof of the intricately engineered clockwork of a Dickens novel, full of sudden revelations and shock reversals, it could hardly be any other way. And in any case, it always takes care to have a joke on hand to lubricate every narrative turn. So, when Conceptiva Secret-Past and her daughter Victoria use Primly Tightclench's deportment volumes to bludgeon their way past the baddies you get a quick close-up of the titles they've picked: "How to Hurt a Large Man" and "Self Defence for Girls". I wasn't entirely sure about the first one-off special of Mark Evans's comedy at Christmas, but it's far easier to surrender to its silliness now that it's been sliced up into half-hour portions.

The cast is excellent, with Robert Webb relishing the possibilities for guileless credulity and Tim McInnerny chewing the carpet (in a splendid way) as the dastardly Harmswell Grimstone. At one point last night, he paused in the middle of a triumphant cackle as if something was missing, stroked his upper lip and said pensively: "I really must grow a moustache to twirl." I enjoyed the trial scene a lot too, in which Harmswell arrived understandably confident that he would prevail. The judge was called Harshmore Grimstone and he'd taken advantage of the immemorial right of every Englishman to be tried by a jury of his cousins.

Let's hope this isn't the last we see of Bleak Old Shop of Stuff. The Dickensian sitcom is a bit in love with its own eccentricity but its world of urchin pies and seagull shoes and people called Vilebert is also deliciously, stupidly funny. Tonight young Victoria Secret-Past finds herself in the "posturetorium", where a string attached to the top of her will release a caged "deportment tiger" to savage her if she doesn't stand up straight. Meanwhile, Jedrington discovers gin and Harmswell does a lot of evil laughing.

The enjoyably affectionate Dickensian sitcom comes to an end tonight, and let's hope it's not the last we see of Robert Webb's good-natured Jedrington Secret-Past. Here Jedrington is brought back to sobriety by Servegood and reunited with his wife Conceptiva (Katherine Parkinson). And together they take the evil Harmswell Grimstone (Tim McInnerny) to court to demand the return of the business and their daughter.

Why isn't The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff as funny on TV?

Plenty of comedies start life on the radio, where imagination plays a part, but which TV shows should have stayed there?

Bleak Old Shop is surely too silly to be borne, yet it comes up with some great gags. Tonight, a bereaved Jedrington Secret-Past cannot demonstrate his grief because it's illegal for men to show emotion. So he is given a seedy solution that is both stupid and very funny.

As for the dead-through-shame Conceptiva, she is an unwitting subject for an opportunist Pre-Raphaelite painter and later ekes out a living pretending to talk cockney to perverts (Men get off on her dropped aitches).

But the undoubted Sight of the Week is the splendid Tim McInnerny dressed as a rabbit, subverting A Christmas Carol as the Ghost of Easter, with horrific visions of a future without "Massive Tim".

Victorian television-making techniques

When Mark Evans, writer of The Bleak Old Shop Of Stuff, first suggested we make a Victorian television programme I assumed he meant a programme set in Victorian times.

Sarah Hadland: I watch The Killing all night

Sarah Hadland made it big in Miranda and is now starring in The Bleak Old Shop Of Stuff - here she tells Metro about her favourite TV programmes, from Damages to The Killing.