Stand-ups on Weinstein, taboos - & the gags they regret

Is it ever OK for comedians to joke about sexual assault? Is there such a thing as 'too soon'? Margaret Cho, Doug Stanhope, David Cross and other fearless comics on the fine line between funny and offensive.

David Cross interview

Comic and actor David Cross talks the unsurprising rise of Donald Trump, the stupidity of George W. Bush - and playing some of the dumbest characters ever written for TV.

Q&A: Stuart Goldsmith

Stuart Goldsmith is a former street performer, an actor, and a stand-up comic with a series of lauded Edinburgh hours under his belt. But he's a podcaster too - having launched The Comedian's Comedian Podcast back in 2012. The podcast began as Goldsmith's way of talking to mostly UK comedians and learning more about how they approach and create comedy, but has since grown into a platform where listeners will find in-depth, sometimes two-part interviews with internationally-renowned comics like David Cross or Patton Oswalt. Now, Goldsmith is embarking on his first ever national tour with his 2015 Edinburgh show: An Hour. Below, we talk about the show itself, gimmicky titles, the podcast - and how it's helped him develop both his approach to comedy and his audience - how to get more people in the UK listening to podcasts, before finally we talk Edinburgh and his recent jump to the Free Fringe.

This week's new live comedy

Previews of David Cross, Danny Bhoy and Richard Herring.

Radio Times review

This BBC Four comedy just gets better. After the introductory episode, things are heating up for our embassy-bound duo Ludo Backslash (Dustin Demri-Burns) and Dan Hern (Ben Miller), with MI6 and the CIA pulling out all the stops to tempt them out of the embassy.

Their plans include playing an ice-cream truck jingle outside the window ("It worked for Uday Hussein!"), catfishing and revealing that there's a mole in the embassy - surely it couldn't be the 50-year-old unpaid intern with a suspicious American accent (an excellent guest role from Arrested Development's David Cross)?

As Dan and Ludo's position becomes less certain, the show seems to become more confident, with gags and topical references coming thick and fast.

The second series of this comedy about a hopeless salesman (played by co-creator David Cross), has been hanging around for two years before finding a home on FOX. It's nowhere near as good as its excellent line-up of stars.

The superb Will Arnett (from 30 Rock) makes a brief appearance and Sharon Horgan is woefully under-used. Mad Men's Jon Hamm also turns up in a cameo role. It's very chaotic and silly, and contains some ill-advised rape "gags" that should never have reached the screen.

As if it wasn't hard to enough to embrace a show where the lead ends each episode doused in some bodily fluid or other, this week Todd Margaret's cluelessness about jolly old England sees him draped in a BNP T-shirt. David Cross, it appears, will do anything to get a laugh and most of the time his total lack of fear pays off. This week, Todd searches for a celebrity to endorse his toxic energy drink, resulting in a special guest appearance that must be completely baffling to the US half of this co-production.

The Incredibly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret stars David Cross as a bumbling, ineffectual US middle manager given to outrageous bluffing, who is mistaken for a hard ass sales dynamo by his sociopathic boss. Promoted way beyond his capabilities, Todd is subsequently sent to the company's London office to spearhead a campaign promoting a toxic Korean energy drink in the UK.

On arrival he finds his office dilapidated, his luggage blown up by anti-terrorist officers, unrequited love with a kind hearted cafe owner and his entire sales team consisting of a solitary, bone idle assistant who delights in challenging and undermining what miniscule authority he has.

The first thing to say about the show is that it doesn't skimp on energy or jokes. But the energy is unfocused and the quality of the jokes fluctuate wildly throughout, depending heavily upon contrived, slapstick set pieces. Moreover, Todd's trademark haplessness frequently topples over into outright irritating, never an attractive quality in a sitcom lead character.