Ben Miller: Peppa Pig is better than Downton Abbey

"Peppa Pig isn't a kids' TV show, it's a masterpiece," says Ben Miller.

Ben Miller to guest star in Doctor Who

Ben Miller is set to guest star opposite Peter Capaldi when the new series of Doctor Who returns this autumn.

A welcome return of the surreal comedy set on the fictional island of Jinsy. In the opener of this double bill, Arbiter Maven (Justin Chubb) is due for his Follication Ceremony, but his vanity gets the better of him as he uses a hair potion whose growth properties rage out of control. Stephen Fry guests as Dr Bevelspepp, relishing the rich dialogue, full of "herbal unguents" and suchlike. In the second, in which the island's bookkeeping is thrown into crisis by a racism scandal, Ben Miller appears as both the chief accountant and his daughter.

Featuring a talent competition judged by a dog, a truly hair-raising chase sequence and guest turns from Stephen Fry as a luxuriantly locked hair doctor and Ben Miller as a busty accountant's daughter (and her dad), life in Jinsy is as wonderfully bizarre as it was first time around. So it's a warm welcome back for Justin Chubb and Chris Bran's inspired mix of crackers characters, singing obituaries and catchy tunes. Top of the Jinsy Hit Parade in this opening double bill are the skiffle-tastic Was It You? and torch song Vegetable Tricks - and you also get to see what Greg Davies looks like in a skirt, in case you'd been wondering.

Stand by your tesselators for series two of the surreal sitcom. Fans of its lunatic thatch of The Wicker Man and Mighty Boosh will be pleased to know its formula is unchanged: crazy tale interspersed with beautifully crafted diversions.

To the uninitiated, This Is Jinsy is set on a fictional island, isolated in behaviour, religion and technology from the rest of the world. Parking meter-style tesselators spout vaguely sinister pronouncements about clothing, food or furniture, and entertainment takes the form of a talent contest presided over by a dog called Sandy.

The butt of nearly all the jokes is Arbiter Maven (Justin Chubb), a ludicrous popinjay whose disastrous follication ceremony in the first of this double bill leads to some hairy, Doctor Who-style horrors. And it's his more intelligent assistant, Sporall (Chris Bran), with his brown 70s suit and luxuriant 70s hair, who gets in most of the jibes.

This Is Jinsy may be the very definition of cult, but it's one that attracts Big Names. Stephen Fry is in the opener as a hair-museum curator, Ben Miller plays a feral accountant in the second episode; Eileen Atkins and Derek Jacobi will pop in later in the run.

Tracee Henge's Unwinese weather forecasts are especially fine, and the mad songs are as MP3-friendly as ever.

Ben Miller shows his comic timing in The Duck House

Have I Got News For You and Mock The Week writers Dan Patterson and Colin Swash parody the expenses scandal with aplomb, Alexia Skinitis discovers.

Ben Miller interview

Ben Miller on starring in The Duck House, a farce about MPs' expenses, and sketch partnership with Alexander Armstrong.

Ben Miller on starring in new play The Duck House

Ben Miller returns to the West End in The Duck House, a new satire about the 2009 parliamentary scandal over claims for moat-cleaning and hanging baskets. After the fury comes the fun.

Ben Miller to star in MPs' expenses satire

Ben Miller is to play a dodgy politician in a new political satire about the MPs' expenses scandal. The Duck House will open in the West End in December following a five-week UK tour.

Tony Hancock had no children, but for decades his descendants have been all around us. Basil Fawlty, Rigsby from Rising Damp, Brian Potter from Phoenix Nights, Mark Corrigan from Peep Show, Alan Partridge - all inherited his genes, or at any rate his character's genes (it isn't easy to be sure of the difference, given that by far his most successful role was as a miserable actor-comedian called Tony Hancock).

It would be absurd to suggest the listed characters are identical - every one of them is a brilliant creation in his own right - but all are irritable, stuffy, pompous, emotionally constipated and prematurely middle-aged; they tut and sneer and grumble and moan, each convinced that Fate has singled him out for mistreatment he doesn't deserve.

All are in some way thwarted, yearning impotently for stardom (Partridge), status (Fawlty, Potter), a beautiful woman (Rigsby, Corrigan). And each, most importantly, exudes an air of pathos. No matter how wretchedly they behave, the viewer can't hate them. They remain somehow heroes, awful heroes, and against our better judgement we're on their side. Just as we were with their father, Hancock.

On Tuesday the great progenitor was the subject of BBC One's occasional series My Hero. Ben Miller, of Armstrong & Miller, was the man paying tribute, rummaging through his life and shaking his head in admiration at old scripts of Hancock's Half Hour. These scripts were written not by Hancock but by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, whom Miller interviewed.

Given Hancock enjoyed vast success while Galton & Simpson were writing for him, and next to none after he'd got rid of them, it might be tempting to wonder whether My Hero should have been about them instead. But if Hancock's Half Hour was the biggest thing on radio and TV, it wasn't just because of the dialogue. Hancock himself - and again I'm not sure whether I mean the character, the man or both - stood for something. He stood for England, the England of the 1950s. Weary, glamourless, frustrated, frayed, but battling grumpily on - that was England, and that was Hancock. Hancock's success came to an end not long after the Fifties had. He killed himself in 1968.