My TV Christmas cracker: The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff

The Mark Evans-scripted comedy series kicks off with a truly festive special starring Robert Webb and Stephen Fry.

Fans of BBC Radio 4's cult ­Dickensian spoof Bleak ­Expectations will be delightified at the news that Mark Evans has penned a Christmas special for TV.

The Bleak Old Shop Of Stuff - the first of a four-parter - is a brand new story but a very familiar one that's stuffed with those essential Dickensian staples - flinty-hearted lawyers, grubby-faced urchins bursting into song, cobwebby spinsters, suggestive surnames and the spectre of debtor's prison, known here as The Skint.

Robert Webb stars as the kindly Jedrington Secret-Past - owner of The Old Shop Of Stuff. But his hopes for a happy Christmas with his loving family are shattered by the arrival of evil lawyer Malifax Skulkingworm (Stephen Fry), a sinful man in an unusual hat demanding an unpaid debt that will be his ruin.

The cast includes David Mitchell as an exceedingly jolly man, Johnny Vegas (already a veteran of the BBC's adaptation of Bleak House), Katherine Parkinson, Celia Imrie and Pauline McLynn - as well as a small but pivotal role in every sense for young Jude Wright from Sky's recent sitcom Spy.

TV provides the opportunity for the kind of visual sight gags and special effects that radio doesn't and they've really gone to town creating a virtual Victorian London.

Purists might argue that it's funnier on the radio when your imagination is left to supply the pictures, but this still serves up a splendidly silly start to the Christmas week.

My TV Christmas Cracker: The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff

The Mark Evans-scripted comedy series kicks off with a truly festive special starring Robert Webb and Stephen Fry...

You may have heard this when it first went out in the 6.30pm comedy zone but if you are generally averse to what's offered in those slots and thus missed it, grab it now. Mark Evans writes one of the wittiest, most ingenious scripts on the air, a Dickensian pastiche with a slight Rocky Horror Show echo. Director Gareth Edwards has cast it beautifully and the actors (Richard Johnson and Anthony Head among them) give it their considerable all.

A freshly minted comedy classic here, as the third series of Mark Evans's Dickensian spoof gets a full commercial release following its Radio 4 run. While strictly speaking it's a literary parody, keen scholars shouldn't expect too much in the way of donnish wit: the focus here is much more on balls-to-the-wall silliness with flourishes of surrealism. Bleak Expectations chronicles the struggles of orphan turned wealthy wastepaper-basket magnate Pip Bin (played by ebullient, talented newcomer Tom Allen) against the villainous activities of his legal guardian and tormentor-in-chief, the inappropriately named Mr Gently Benevolent (a who-knew comic performance of genius from Buffy's one-time mentor Anthony Head). While the show cocks plenty of snooks at costume-drama cliches, bigger laughs come from outlandish moments like the succession of bizarre and ineffectual inventions offered up by Bin's nice but useless engineer sidekick, Harry Biscuit.

Mark Evans's magnificent Dickensian pastiche reaches episode four, with Pip Bin (our hero) and his family going through yet more excruciatingly hard times and whole old shopfuls of curiosities. It really is very funny and has the added benefit of a first rate cast. How odd, though, for Radio 4 to schedule Mike Walker's 20-part adaptation of Dickens' own Our Mutual Friend in such close proximity (10.45am - the Woman's Hour Drama - and 7.45pm daily). It, too, has good acting and atmospheric production but if you hear it after Bleak Expectations it just seems hilarious.

Yesterday was dipped in honey and spread across the week like a special treat, for it saw the return for a third series of Mark Evans's wonderful parody of Victorian melodrama, Bleak Expectations (Radio 4, 6.30pm). This continuing story of Pip Bin, the inventor of the pedal bin, Harry Biscuit, Mr Gently Benevolent and the rest was everything we have come to love. Evans has long left behind the Dickensian templates that informed Bleak Expectations at the beginning - now, anything goes. The growth of the temperance movement means that Pip and Harry, pleasure bent, are forced to walk past alcohol-free pubs such as The Killjoy and Horses on their way to a low dive in the East End - The Jellied Eel and Murderer - that does serve strong drink.

Staggering out, they fall prey to a larcenous pigeon that steals Pip's handkerchief, murders some poor wretch (for the bird has been inhabited by the spirit of the evil Gently Benevolent, currently in a Voldemortian not-quite-himself state) and then drops it on the corpse to incriminate Pip. Inspector Whackwallop of Scotland Yard shows up to grill our hero: "The victim had hundreds of tiny wounds and was clutching your handkerchief." "Ah, that's easily explained. A pigeon stole it and must have dropped it there accidentally. Now, Inspector, you say the body had hundreds of tiny wounds."

"Aha! I never said it had hundreds of tiny wounds."

"Yes you did."

"Damn. That normally works. Aha! I never said he was an apprentice blacksmith."

"And nor did I."

"Didn't you? Damn again."

And so on. Existing lovers of Bleak Expectations will already know that the inspired lunacy of previous series is intact. Newcomers will doubtless be hopelessly confused, but eager to learn more. The BBC iPlayer is but several computer strokes away. Have at it.

Third series of Mark Evans's artful Dickens parody in which old Sir Philip (Richard Johnson) recalls his inventive youth and rise to fame when he was young Pip Bin (Tom Allen), struggling against cruel blows of fate supported only by eternal optimism and innate stupidity. It's full of in-jokes, references to other comedies and much merry sport with neologisms and circumlocutions. It also, smartly, simultaneously both conjures and makes fun of a Victorian world of seances, temperance movements and murky crime. Dazzling cast. Slick production.

When last we heard from Pip Bin, he had thwarted the evil Mr Gently Benevolent and his equally evil plans for world domination. Now, to the great delight of all right-minded folk, Mark Evans's superlative parody of everything Victorian, but mostly its literature, is back for a third series. The older Sir Pip continues to tell his life story to his son-in-law, Sourquill, otherwise known as "the fly in the ointment, the dead rat in the vegetable soup, the pig-and-shellfish surprise at a kosher banquet". Surely now the young Pip can look forward to a quiet existence with Ripely Fecund? Alas, no, as a seance goes badly awry - and an inspector calls. Rich, ripe language, a hissable villain and a sublime cast, including Anthony Head, who is clearly having the most fun with this delicious silliness, make for the best radio known to man.

Oh deep, deep joy. Mark Evans's comic homage to Dickens and 19th-century literature is back for a second volume as Sir Philip Bin, inventor of, er, the bin, continues to look back on a life that has been an endless progression of trials, setbacks, and conveniently placed cliffhanger endings, where adventure has followed him like a dog follows a man with bacon trousers and lamb-chop underpants.

His evil nemesis, Mr Gently Benevolent, dead at the end of the first series, is resurrected, à la Mary Shelley, to exact vengeance on his ward and his friends. There's no point trying to follow the plot, it would be like trying to explain a Monty Python sketch to someone with a humour bypass. Enjoy spotting the references, the rich language and the great rolling vowels from Richard Johnson as Sir Pip and some great ham carved by Anthony Head as the villain of the piece.