Hugh Dennis interview

Hugh Dennis, star of Outnumbered, reveals why the final series of the hit family sitcom may not be the last after all.

Punt and Dennis: Ploughing on Regardless, touring

Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis's new show is entertaining even if it sometimes feels like old news, says Dominic Cavendish.

Hugh Dennis's favourite TV

The Outnumbered and Mock The Week star on his top TV treats.

Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt on their funny relationship

From sharing a flat to going on the road, comedians Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt have been working together for 25 years - and they still find each other funny.

Final chapters from a series that has been less Jackanory for adults, more finding your TV tuned to audio description mode during a genial Tales Of The Unexpected reboot. Before the big book is placed back into the bookcase, there's time for Hugh Dennis to tell the tale of Jack, a superhero juggling his day job at a care home with the marginally more exciting world of cat rescue. Then, Stephen Mangan reads the story of a former activist rediscovering his idealistic edge when confronted with a chicken-chomping despot.

I've always had a vague idea that Three Men in a Boat, with the participants' interminable discussions of the state of their innards, renditions of unfunny jokes and constant trips to the pub, just wasn't for me. Boys' stuff.

Then along comes a Sparklab production for BBC Radio 4's Classic Serial that leaves me helpless with laughter and admiration. So I recant my former unthinking critique - the kind of thing the book's author Jerome K Jerome was well used to as he declared himself "the best abused writer in England" for a good 20 years after its 1889 publication.

The tale of a trio of under-the-weather Edwardian gents who think a paddle up the Thames will be good for their constitutions is adapted by Chris Harrald and produced by Melanie Harris with a fine attention to detail and an ear for the nuances of a comic literary style.

The glorious prelude to getting afloat - the haphazard packing, the oversleeping, the ineffectual navigation of Waterloo Station - is a cumulative humour attack, as are the thought bubbles about previous comic mishaps, which are worked up into delightful setpieces.

Most striking is how contemporary are the characters' preoccupations. Okay, there are no smartphones, takeaways or hip hop, and J has to visit the British Library to indulge his hypochondriacal tendencies. But his conclusion that he suffers from every condition listed in an A-Z of diseases, barring housemaid's knee - which he finds rather hurtful - will be familiar to many who google their suspected symptoms.

None of the cast - Julian Rhind-Tutt, Hugh Dennis and his erstwhile double-act partner Steve Punt - aims to grab the comic glory or play to the gallery. In fact, they are all rather Pooterish, and, as in the Grossmiths' The Diary of a Nobody, whose protagonist begat that term, the emphasis is on a wryness of tone and a synthesis of apparently unintentional hilarity.

Hugh Dennis on being an idiot around Hugh Laurie

He'd have a puppet play him in a movie and get Alastair McGowan to do his voice - if only he could stay cool in front of the other Hugh...

Eager to know why Manuel from Fawlty Towers had a moustache? The worst thing about being in Blackadder? Or maybe which actors had to bring their own clothes to film a hit pilot? The answers to these hot-button issues in Jo Brand's poorly disguised old-timey clip-show are perfectly pitched, provoking - if anything - the kind of weary, non-committal, slightly surly shrug that's engendered by watching the actual programme itself.

Brand presides over a genial half-hour of sitcom quizzery that sees team leaders Rebecca Front and Barry 'Mine's a Large One!' Cryer joined by Hugh Dennis and Tony Robinson for a trawl through some well-thumbed snippets from the BBC archives. Andrew Sachs and Ian Lavender deliver creaky old war stories and Cryer delves into his endless fund of Willie Rushton anecdotes, before a round where the guests all try on a variety of wigs puts the show out of its misery.

Brand and guests are very easy people to like, but this is the worst kind of filler; to damn it with even fainter praise, it's the sort of programme that Alan Partridge would consider 'classic broadcasting'.

Radio Times review

This is billed as a panel game but it's more of a parlour game - perhaps after a stodgy supper, given the pervading air of lethargy - in which four comedy stars flop out on sofas separated by a bank of TV screens from host Jo Brand.

Team captains Rebecca Front and Barry Cryer are joined by guests Tony Robinson and Hugh Dennis, who divulge a few of their own comedy secrets and answer questions that pop up on screen from the likes of Andrew Sachs, Lesley Joseph and Shaun Williamson. It's mildly amusing, but Jo Brand is always better unscripted.

To start with, this felt too much like a great big luvvie love-in, with the voice-over eulogising one comedian (Hugh Dennis) so he could eulogise another (Ronnie Barker). My heart also sank a little when Dennis, more at home deadpanning through Mock the Week, set off to visit the semi where Barker grew up, noting that little was known about his home life. I was braced for the revelation that Barker, a jovial comic giant who made the world seem a happier place with one glance over the top of his spectacles, was an anguished soul who collected broken dolls.
Happily nothing of the kind emerged, and the programme moved on to surer footing with a highly enjoyable trawl through Barker's work, from The Frost Report to The Two Ronnies, Porridge and beyond. Behind-the-scenes glimpses of Barker's creative mind included his meticulous diagrams choreographing a Morris dancing sketch, and a mock press release which chastised David Frost for hogging the credit for the Golden Rose of Montreux award by accusing him of stealing it with the help of unnamed and mysterious accomplices.

It was hard not to get misty-eyed at the footage of Barker accepting his lifetime achievement Bafta in 2004 with typical warmth and wit. The programme captured the end of an era, when Barker's innocent blend of postcard innuendo, verbal tomfoolery and physical hi-jinks personified British comedy - long before the days of Mock the Week.