Radio Times review

You can guess where writer Tony Roche (The Thick of It, Fresh Meat) throws the TV Biographical Drama Rule Book, can't you? Yes, right through an open window, because Holy Flying Circus, about the furore of moral panic and hypocrisy that greeted the 1979 cinema release of Monty Python's Life of Brian, usurps every bio-pic trope and convention.

Thus Holy Flying Circus is littered with dream sequences and wanders off down some fantastical little byways (a bit too often, if truth be told) as we build up to the infamous ambush, on the live TV chat show Friday Night... Saturday Morning, of John Cleese and Michael Palin by an epically supercilious Bishop of Southwark and religious commentator Malcolm Muggeridge.

Roy Marsden is majestically effete and patronising as the bishop, Mervyn Stockwood, but the film belongs to Charles Edwards, who just IS Michael Palin, and Darren Boyd as John Cleese.

Oh, and Stephen Fry plays God. Of course. The whole thing is a mad mash-up of self-reference, cross-dressing, ribaldry and nonsense. I loved it!

The furore surrounding the release of Monty Python's Life of Brian in 1979 - which saw the film picketed by nuns, banned by local councils and accused of blasphemy - forms the basis of this one-off drama, a homage to the Pythons by Tony Roche (one of the writers for The Thick of It and its film spin-off, In the Loop). The drama raises good points about freedom of speech, religious intolerance and the boundaries of comedy.

It's also cheeky, fantastical and occasionally very funny. The structure, however, is a bit of a mess, trying too hard to ape the chaos of the Python format - it's often too surreal for its own good. The mix of drama, animation and puppetry builds towards a late-night confrontation on a TV chat show in which John Cleese (played by Darren Boyd of Green Wing and Whites) and Michael Palin (Charles Edwards) are pitted against the media commentator and outspoken Christian Malcolm Muggeridge (Michael Cochrane) and the Bishop of Southwark (Roy Marsden). This chat show debate really did take place; after it, Cleese and Palin said they'd lost their respect for Muggeridge, whom they'd admired in his earlier career as a satirist.

I really loved it. I know, a Sky One comedy! (It's fine, we're all telly snobs here.) Darren Boyd has been around for years - you'll know his face, if not the name, from Green Wing and Whites - but I have to say I've never taken much notice of him before. But I'm happy to say that he's genuinely brilliant here as an under-achieving divorcee dad Tim who stumbls into a job with MI5. His pious, genius son is a great character, and Horrible Histories' Matthew Baynton is really funny and very well cast as Tim's weird best friend.

It has to be said that elements of this felt familiar - I suspect writer/creator Simeon Goulden is a big Spaced fan, and the scene in which Tim disrupts the entrance exam is pure Men In Black. But none of that lessened my enjoyment - Goulden is borrowing from the best there, after all - and I was chuckling throughout. Give it a go.

Sky is certainly stepping up its comedy offering, with This Is Jinsy recently joining the likes of Trollied and Mount Pleasant on Sky Atlantic and Sky 1. Spy is another hopeful offering. It stars Darren Boyd as single dad Tim, a hapless buffoon working in a high street computer shop who accidentally gets a job in MI5. There's a US comedy called Chuck with a vaguely similar premise, but Spy parachutes in British flourishes, like Robert Lindsay and the obligatory verbose child in the shape of Tim's deeply patronising son. It will need considerably more laughs in future episodes to stand repeat viewing.

No, that's not Lord Sugar in his first acting role. It's actually a bearded Robert Lindsay playing a recruiter from MI5 in this promising new British sitcom.

Darren Boyd stars as Tim, a bumbling single dad who quits his dead-end job in a computer shop and aces the aptitude test for a civil service job without knowing what he's applying for.

He's obviously not a Spooks fan, or he'd recognise the door.

As well as Spooks, this sitcom, follows in the wake of Johnny English and also the American spy comedy Chuck, whose hero also worked in a computer store.

The show's secret weapon is Tim's son, Marcus (Jude Wright), a cynical, middle-aged head on a nine-year-old's body.

In a different intellectual league from most wise-cracking kids, Marcus is actually more like Stewie, the evil talking baby from Family Guy. Not the most original ingredients, but as long as Spy keeps us laughing, that shouldn't matter.

Darren Boyd, who can do hapless chump in his sleep, stars in this promising comedy espionage caper. Boyd is Tim, a going-nowhere kind of guy saddled with a precocious son, who finds himself fast-tracked into the secret service when his office job application falls into the hands of spooky spymaster Robert Lindsay. Think James Bond rewritten as Uh-Oh7.

Tim really is a loser. As we meet him he's suffering yet another dressing-down from his nastily precocious nine-year-old son (Jude Wright), his withering ex and her annoying new bloke. He's stuck in a terrible retail job. He's lazy, nervous and accident-prone.

Tim's the character Darren Boyd was born to play, in other words, and consequently everything Boyd says and does is funny in this new comedy from relatively unknown writer Simeon Goulden.

Today, Tim's life changes as he accidentally gets a job working as an MI5 agent with licence to kill. The bumbler-out-of-water gag is a bit of an easy comedy win that could feasibly wear thin over a series - but based on the cutting comebacks and rat-a-tat timing here, it probably won't. As Tim's Secret Service colleagues, Robert Lindsay and Rebekah Staton are excellent foils for Boyd.

Sky 1 is producing some very decent comedy at the moment, the latest example of which is Spy. Darren Boyd stars as Tim, a recently divorced, directionless, unambitious 30-something stuck in a dead end sales assistant job. Stung by his nine year old son's contempt, he applies for a post within the civil service, only to be inadvertently recruited by MI5.

The show doesn't even bother explaining this particular plot contrivance, possibly because there is a lot of setting up to be getting on with, more likely because they have correctly guessed that nobody really cares. Everybody is impatient for hapless Tim to get on with some comedy spying.

Most of episode one was concerned with establishing the comic scenario, so it's probably too early to pass judgment on Spy. But there were some very encouraging jokes, the characters are interesting and Boyd displays an impressive aptitude for slapstick which, I suspect, will come in handy in the future.

The eminently watchable Robert Lindsay co-stars as Tim's suave but secretly alcoholic "control", bearing an altogether disconcerting physical resemblance to Alan Sugar. Although on this showing Sugar's recruitment policy would appear to be a lot more stringent than MI5's.

Darren Boyd is a slightly more effective undercover in Spy, a new Sky1 sitcom whose premise seems lifted from the American series Chuck: they're both about hapless, put-upon guys who work in computer stores and are accidentally recruited by the secret services, thenceforth having to maintain their geeky cover while juggling espionage adventures. Chuck, though, is a glossy action show and Spy is, unfortunately, just the usual underachieving British sitcom which somehow manages to take a talented enough cast and a promising enough premise and yet not deliver any real laughs at all.

Boyd's longsuffering Tim looks slightly irritated throughout, though it doesn't stop several women (including the wasted Rebekah Staton) falling for him, while it's interesting that instead of the usual cute, supportive kid, his nine-year-old son is a horrible little monster out to undermine his dad at any opportunity - interesting, but not actually funny. Still, the show has Robert Lindsay, liberated at last from the shackles of being the one to play the longsuffering dad in My Family, now as a demented, grizzled spy boss and clearly enjoying himself hugely. At least someone is.

Darren Boyd & Jude Wright interview

Darren Boyd plays feckless father Tim, who is accidentally recruited to MI5, and his co-star is newcomer Jude Wright, whose part as Tim's nine-year-old son Marcus is his first TV role... TV Choice Magazine caught up with Darren and Jude during filming to find out more...