Toast Of London

IT Crowd star Matt Berry gets to be booming and absurd once again in this highly promising new sitcom pilot written by Berry and Arthur Mathews (Father Ted, Big Train) and showcased as part of C4's Funny Fortnight season. He's actor Steven Toast, who regularly pops up on the London stage and in classy TV dramas. But when we meet him when he's committed a major career faux pas - by starring in a West End play so outrageous it has left critics and the public utterly appalled.

Toast of London review: Best in season?

Channel 4's comedy series Funny Fortnight continued apace this evening and Toast of London will certainly take some beating over the next two weeks.

Proving that Channel 4's "funny fortnight" doesn't just consist of two year old footage of Peter Kay, the channel have bagged acclaimed writer Arthur Mathews, a contributor to Father Ted and writing partner of the brilliant Graham Linehan for this one-off. Toast Of London charts a day in the life of Steve Toast - played by Matt Berry - a recently divorced actor who embarks on a controversial West End play. So controversial, in fact, that the producer is in imprison for racial chanting, leading Toast to rehearse the part of a corrupt gay detective in a prison meeting room - a suitably hysterical scene helped by the superb Geoffrey McGivern. Let's just hope for a series in 2013...

My pick of C4's Funny Fortnight is Arthur Mathews and Matt Berry's sitcom pilot about an actor (Berry - Douglas Reynolm in The IT Crowd, but a revelation here) whose career sinks after appearing in a vilified West End play. It's as expansive and surreal as you'd expect from the creator of Father Ted, and I loved the audition (for a director in jail for Holocaust denial) in a prison visiting room.

We really are through the looking glass here, as Toast Of London is yet another promising sitcom pilot. Co-written with Father Ted co-creator Arthur Mathews, it's a winningly silly vehicle for Matt Berry from The IT Crowd, and follows a farcical day in the life of a successful West End stage actor.

Yes, it finds the one-note Berry delivering the only performance he can - a bombastic, bawdy, swaggering ham with a voice like vintage brandy - but I can't deny that, with a busily gag-strewn script such as this, he exploits his limited strengths to the full. Not to be outdone, the whole cast - including the great Geoffrey McGivern, last seen in Dead Boss - deliver similarly broad performances, and the whole thing is so relentlessly daft it's hard to resist its rambling charms. More please, C4!

A strong new one-off sitcom created by Father Ted writer Arthur Mathews and The IT Crowd's Matt Berry, who also stars as Steven Toast, legend of stage and screen. Having been a success for years, Toast is on his uppers after taking the lead role in a controversial West End play. Eager to get his career back on track he lets his London agent (Fiona Mollison) convince him to audition for a popular TV drama - the only problem being that the producer is in prison. Enjoyably bonkers, with a good supporting cast including Robert Bathurst and Tracy-Ann Oberman.

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