People Just Do Nothing

Just when you think the whole comedy documentary format has had every last laugh wrung out of it, along comes BBC3's People Just Do Nothing with a take that is fresh, original and very funny.

The four-part series centres upon Kurupt FM, "the biggest and baddest pirate station in the land", operating out of a high-rise council flat in Brentford, west London, and broadcasting all the way to Shepherd's Bush, west London, where it dissolves into white noise.

The station's leader is garage "legend" MC Grindah (Allan Mustafa), a man whose self-importance is in inverse proportion to his self-awareness. Like all the best comedy monsters, Grindah is a combination of the desperately pitiful and the truly appalling, a strutting motormouth forever spewing cliches, bombast and delusion to anybody stupid enough to listen. This is largely limited to his mate and co-presenter DJ Beats (Hugo Chegwin), cronies Decoy and Steves (Dan Sylvester Woolford and Steve Stamp), local entrepreneur Chabuddy G (Asim Chaudhry) and, further fanning the flames of Grindah's rampant ego, an off-screen BBC documentary team earnestly trying to capture the authentic voice of the streets.

We also get to meet Grindah's girlfriend Miche (Lily Brazier), whose epically inane ramblings include the dismissal of her boyfriend's criminal convictions as "silly little things, like GBH and hate crime".

Episode one saw Kurupt FM trying to soundproof their walls with egg boxes following threats from a neighbour to report them to the council. Grindah is alert to the danger such an eventuality poses to both the station's secret location and their very existence as musical outlaws. "The government works for the council," he explains to his equally dim cohorts.

The set-up is original, the execution clever, the characters rich and the acting superb. From many wonderful moments, my favourite has to be Chabuddy G proudly showing off his latest money-making scheme: bags of peanut dust, everybody's favourite when all the peanuts have gone.

From YouTube to BBC Comedy Feed to full series

The fact that none of us had ever acted or written before never felt like a problem.

DJ Beats and MC Grindah's top 10 pirate radio anthems

The superstars of west London's Kurupt FM, whose comedy People Just Do Nothing is coming to BBC Three on Sunday, pick their favourite bangers.

The best British comedy in years is on iPlayer

If you've already watched People Just Do Nothing, you'll already know what the fuss is about. It's bloody brilliant, isn't it?

People Just Do Nothing review

The last episode is the funniest out of the lot, as the Kurupt FM crew turn to Chabuddy G to create their website.

People Just Do Nothing, BBC iPlayer, review: impressive

A more sophisticated version of the short pilot aired as part of the Feed My Funny strand last year, this was all the better for being polished up: the writing tighter, the acting a little more street, the west London patois deeper and more convincing.

It's rare that we say this, but this is a BBC3 comedy that might actually benefit from being a series. Not that it's anything more than a very minor pleasure, but this spoof documentary about fictional London pirate station Kurupt FM feels like a slow burner that might actually improve with some character development and a few narrative arcs to explore. As it stands, this one-off written by Steve Stamp will raise the odd smirk but not much more. It follows a familiar template: a group of losers with a brittle but exaggerated sense of self-worth blunder on despite the self-evident limitations of their ability. MC Sniper has emerged from prison after 'a two stretch, yeah? Two weeks.' He's disappointed that his dim pal DJ Beats has let the station drift in his absence. Can Sniper get things going again?

Ash Atalla has executive-produced this gem of a mockumentary, which has been on iPlayer for a few weeks now, but deserves the bigger audience this slot should bring. MC Sniper is the "general" of pirate radio station Kurupt FM, freshly released from prison after a "two-stretch" (that's two weeks) for selling knock-off designer gear: "The feds came and ruined everything, as per." It's sharp, silly and surprisingly touching, and on the basis of this excellent pilot, merits a full series.