The art of the preview: Dylan Moran At Stockton Arc

Dylan Moran's tour Yeah, Yeah will officially begin later this month, but last Wednesday he previewed his new show at Stockton Arc. Sean Prower went to see the inner workings of Moran's comedy.

Fiver, now rebranded to the attention-deficit-friendly 5*, has been showing highlights of Montreal's Just For Laughs festival for a few weeks now, but tonight's lineup is a cracker worth catching. Noel Fielding brings his energetic oddball surrealism to the Canadian audience. He's followed by Flight Of The Conchords, who are followed in turn by Dylan Moran. If this bill does not amuse you, then there is a strong chance you don't like the funny.

Fiver, now rebranded to the attention-deficit-friendly 5*, has been showing highlights of Montreal's Just For Laughs festival for a few weeks now, but tonight's lineup is a cracker worth catching. Noel Fielding brings his energetic oddball surrealism to the Canadian audience. He's followed by Flight Of The Conchords, who are followed in turn by Dylan Moran. If this bill does not amuse you, then there is a strong chance you don't like the funny.

Dylan Moran interview

He's one of stand up's hottest properties. We spoke to Dylan Moran about his upcoming tour, Yeah, Yeah, being a frontman and anger.

Dylan Moran: 'Panel shows bore me'

Stand-up and Black Books actor Dylan Moran has criticised comedy panel shows.

This pilot will probably win a proper commission, which wouldn't be a bad thing. It wasn't badly written (by Cold Feet's Mike Bullen); some fine lines, plenty of frotting looks and the promise of much sex, and you can easily see the overall idea, which is This Life for the Facebook generation. Two worries. First, without there having yet been the space to expand the characters, we've simply seen their situations, and frankly it's hard to care about what happens to any of them; hard, actually, to even like any of them, with the possible exception of Ed Byrne, and even his charmer of a failing photographer - lopsided grin, bedroom eyes, and Ed's doing a fine job following Dylan Moran into this territory - is too unreconstructed to ring quite true. Second, it's this Facebook generation thing, which actually makes you query the whole premise (and, actually, much of Facebook.) Were they really ever such good friends? They've even been brought together under false circumstances, Hannah toying with the idea of ruining one of their forthcoming marriages. As Sara's sister, Fran (Sarah Jane Potts) says, counselling her vulnerable sibling against getting back in with a group she hasn't heard from for eight years and who are likely to hurt her again (while also, of course, shagging one of them), "You can't say that you just 'lost touch'. Because friends don't lose touch." Fair point, actually.

Graham Linehan's comedies are wonderfully surreal and self-evidently funny, but it's the warm-heartedness at the heart of Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd that makes them endlessly rewatchable. Of course, it's a quality that makes them a sound choice at this time of recumbent vegetation, and so here More4 does the decent thing and not only screens Black Books - the demented Dylan Moran/Bill Bailey-starring series about despotic bookshop proprietor Bernard Black - but also follows it up with episodes from Linehan's other offerings. More enjoyable madness follows tomorrow.

Comedian Dylan Moran

Britain's favourite miserabilist comedian sounds off about getting old, religious unbelief and explains how he became a curmudgeonly grump.

Graham Linehan's always-enjoyable comedy returns for a third run, but as before, it still leaves me yearning for the vibrancy and wit of his Dylan Moran collaboration, Black Books. Still, I'll take what I can get (and compared to Clone, The IT Crowd looks like vintage Galton and Simpson). Roy, Moss and Jen are still stuck in the basement, attending to the IT needs of Reynholm Industries, while Douglas (Matt Berry) does his level best to run his father's company into the ground.

There was a bad moment in the first episode of this series when it seemed as if Black Books might have lost its footing. It was loud and slapstick and too crude to be funny. But now it is right back on form, and this is one of the funniest episodes yet. Manny (Bill Bailey) places a bet on the Grand National, which turns Bernard (Dylan Moran) into a chronic gambler. Once again, it is the inmates against the world. For all that they torment each other, their pooled inadequacies act as a bulwark against customers, debt collectors - and just about everyone else.