Radio Times review

Sports day! As Debbie's kids prepare to run their little races at school, she's going to be late because, in another world, it's time for Ye Grand Tournament. Every year the good guys stop rubbish villain Negatus snatching the cup, but now Debbie has to train a new contender. This uncovers the political fissures in Yonderland: women can't vote, talking sticks are wholly marginalised and noblemen can demand that pages talc their undercarriages. Among the highlights of another constantly funny episode are Ben Willbond's blond Aussie commentator, and a reptilian newspaper seller who flogs left- and right-wing news, using his actual wings.

Laurence Rickard and Ben Willbond on Yonderland & more

I took my place at a round table in the middle of a wood-panelled library (also stuffed with puppets) to chat to the cast of Sky1's Yonderland. First up, Laurence Rickard and Ben Willbond - both familiar faces thanks to the BBC's wonderful adaptation of Horrible Histories. Here's what they had to say about their new show...

It's no secret that many alleged "grown-ups" are supplementing their haphazard history educations with CBBC's Horrible Histories, back for its fifth series with lovely, daft input from The League of Gentlemen. Tiny, mighty Sarah Hadland from Miranda and funny, clever Alice Lowe, writer of Sightseers are regular faces too. To adult eyes, Horrible Histories has the distinct feel of a group of bright, young, erudite, writery-actory sparks having a tremendously good time. One that they probably wouldn't be permitted to have anywhere else on telly.

Kids love them as they are the most peculiar sort of grown-ups. The sort of wonky uncles and aunties who turn up to tea with mild hangovers, scant regard for etiquette and a host of stories about idiot highway men, Second World War bat bombs (bombs attached to bats, prone to exploding before they left the American base) and an imaginary CD compilation called Now That's What I Call Spartan Warrior Music.

There's something about the Horrible Histories gang I find terrifically, stupidly, funny. They're the best bits of Monty Python, Roald Dahl, Tiswas, BBC2's The Tudors and The Young Ones all shoved into a bin and bashed with a stick. "Divorced, beheaded and Died! Divorced, Beheaded, Survived!" is the song that carousels in my mind whenever anyone mentions Henry VIII. Horrible Histories drummed the order of Henry's wives and their fates into my mind where A-level cramming failed forlornly. If only Mathew Baynton and Ben Willbond had shown up at my school in the Nineties and sung a few songs about the fall of the Holy Roman Empire, I could have a proper job now. Not just writing down stuff I think, drinking Earl Grey and taking Yodel deliveries in for neighbours.

An equalities minister who has voted against racial and sexual equality rights. Chuckle. A health secretary who supports homeopathy. Ha! It's good, this politics malarkey, isn't it? A right giggle. Some might think it beyond parody. But thankfully not The Thick of It crew, who, three years after its last series, returned last night with an eagerly awaited fourth to take on the calamity coalition.

First, the good. In fact, the excellent. Roger Allam as the Tory MP Peter Mannion, new head of Dosac - the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship - fills the role perfectly. The floppy hair, the floundering as he tried to explain a "networked nation" that was beyond him, the barely concealed contempt for those he works with ("I'm bored of this," he said, walking out of a meeting with his junior minister. "I'm going for a Twix") and those he works for. ("I hate schoolchildren. They don't even have the vote. Might as well talk to fucking geese.")

Then there's the spin doctor Stewart Pearson, a lighter touch than attack dog Malcolm Tucker, all herbal teas, brainstorming and, in the words of Mannion aide Phil Smith, provider of "seven years of ear piss".

That Tories and Lib Dems might not get on behind closed doors has been the subject of satire ever since this bastard child of Westminster was conceived in May 2010, but it was moved on here to good effect. It reveals the flaws in the central characters and allows for the best line of the night, uttered by Ben Willbond as Lib Dem No 2 Adam Kenyon. "Landmark day," he said as Mannion finally destroyed the launch of the Liberals' "silicon playgrounds". "We bring in an idea, you like it, you nick it, you put two bullets in the back of its head. Snuff politics: you've got to laugh." And you did, you really did.

Yet not everything was quite so sparkling. Punchlines were occasionally heavy-handed and the ranting felt sometimes forced. Consider Lib Dem junior minister Fergus Williams's tirade at punchbag press officer Terri Coverley: "Now you like musicals. Well this is 'Tonight' from West Side Story, and I'm going to bring the bloody house down, so you can't rain on my parade, Funny Girl." Too contrived. Maybe that was the point, but it made you pine for the eloquent misanthropy of Peter Capaldi's expletive-fuelled Tucker. Luckily, he's back in episode two...

The hugely enjoyable comedy chronology returns for a new series. There's nothing else on TV like it, with its spot-on mix of education and bodily functions. In this episode you'll learn about the surprising properties of women's tinkle, where the phrase "warts and all" came from, and how German second world war pilots chose their targets from a tourists' guide to historic landmarks. All this plus the return of Stupid Deaths and an incredible running gag on the Spanish Armada with Ben Willbond dressed as Sir Francis Drake. One for the mums. Actual television perfection.

Here's a quick turnaround. The first transmission of Alistair Beaton's comedy serial finished only recently. Still, I don't suppose they can't often afford a cast as glittering as this so why not make the most of it? Never mind that I think it's shouty, overacted, clattering with clichés and probably originally intended for TV. See what you make of its battle for a newspaper's soul between traditional hack (Robert Lindsay), wily editor (Alex Jennings), assorted nasty females and posh Freddie (Ben Willbond) who's pretending to be a Rasta.

In Michael Frayn's classic novel about Fleet Street, Towards the End of the Morning (1967), there is a memorable hack who rivals a sloth, doing no work from one week's end to the next. Alistair Beaton, once a speechwriter for Gordon Brown, is writing in the same tradition but satirising a new era. Electric Ink - about a newspaper's struggle to go digital - cannot compete with Frayn's genius but made me laugh none the less.

I was aware, too, of the serious question underlying the mirth: whose side are we on? Do we support Maddox (played with magisterial pomposity by Robert Lindsay), a vain, old-school hack who has just written a long (and, according to his news editor, "tedious") piece about a radical Muslim cleric? Or do we back charming twentysomething Freddy (a hilarious Ben Willbond), who speaks in a vivaciously streetwise way and turns out to be an Etonian trying to live down his education?

Freddy is new-media-savvy while Maddox sneers at the phrase "embracing the digital age", maintaining that a handshake is as far as he is prepared to go. Yet, at the end of the first round (with five to follow), it is Maddox - to my astonishment - who, in his stubborn, devious, old-fashioned way, seems to be winning.

Ever the investigative journalist, he discovers that Freddy's story on a new plague ("Generalised Affective Social Stress Disorder") is as bogus as its author - not worth the screen it is printed on.

For this particular instalment, Jones found himself casing the catwalk as a professional photographer at a Milan fashion shoot. Despite being pretty lousy at the job - his only relevant experience was taking pictures of animals - he still ended up jetting off to South America to snap an eccentric and often angry Miss Venezuela.

To attempt to explain what happened next would be far too ambitious, let's just say that Jones' adventure featured encounters with Big Foot and a tribe of eco terrorists, and that was after he discovered what going for a Brazilian really meant.

The joy of the programme was in the writing, particularly the running gags, and the way it was performed by Jones and the cast, which included Tom Goodman-Hill, Dan Tetsell, Ingrid Oliver and Ben Willbond.

This should become the official 'revenge of the nerds' comedy. Written by and starring Ben Willbond and Justin Edwards, this is a tale of two men caught in a perpetual adolescence - one a frustrated hetrosexual, the other a frustrated homosexual.

The fact they are teachers at a sixth-form college permits them to continue living in a flashback episode of Men Behaving Badly set in a school. The comedy is character-driven first, situation second, plot third, but it definitely works.