Marion And Geoff

Rob Brydon on his very, very dark period

Before he was Uncle Bryn or Steve Coogan's dining companion, Rob Brydon made the grim comedy classics Marion & Geoff and Human Remains. Why?

Marion & Geoff is one of the cleverest pieces of comedy writing ever to appear on television, not least because there is not a joke in sight - unless you count the little bon mots Keith conjures up to break the ice which sets around every social situation he finds himself in.

In A Small Summer Party (BBC2) we revisited a key moment in the unfolding drama, the day when it all went wrong at the barbecue. Unfortunately, Rob Brydon and Henry Normal had decided to show us other characters. [...] The bleak humour was here, as was the terrible vocabulary of evasion of the truth, but the overall effect failed to match the poignancy of the original series.

Keith, like the duckbilled platypus, is funny, endearing and wholly unfitted for life on this planet or any other.

Marion and Geoff (BBC2) is the funniest British comedy effort for years, and it is also the most heartbreaking. The fact that each episode is a mere 10 minutes long does not diminish its stature. On the contrary, it leaves the viewer wracked with sobs of laughter and pain, more potent and poignant for being so deftly and economically delivered.