Mathew Baynton

James Corden puts the laddy banter of A League Of Their Own on hold to co-star in this blackly comic crime caper. It's a twisted and oddly gripping tale, following a pair of life's losers getting in way over their heads when a car crash unleashes a bizarre chain of events involving a mobile phone, a kidnapping and a case of mistaken leg amputation.

Corden's new comedy best friend here is Horrible Histories' Mathew Baynton, who bags a co-writing credit (with Corden) and steals the show as baleful Sam, a nerdy town-planning officer pining for his ex, playing the proverbial rabbit caught in the headlights to perfection.

Radio Times review

James Corden's first narrative comedy since Gavin & Stacey does not disappoint, but is a quite different beast. Although Corden's character, office mailroom man Phil, could be Smithy's more optimistic cousin, this is no straight sitcom. It's a lavishly filmed and surprisingly gripping comic thriller about two meek losers caught in a kidnapping caper.

Corden is not the lead: his co-writer Mathew Baynton proves to be at home driving the action as Sam, a milksop who answers a phone at the scene of a car crash and becomes an unwilling hero. Think The Bourne Identity, remade by the Coen brothers, starring a hipster Frank Spencer.

Baynton and Corden's refusal to resort to spoof means the characters are likeable, the jokes are properly funny and the action is convincing. You'll want to know what happens next.

Cheeky chappy James Corden sticks to type but nevertheless tickles with former Gavin & Stacey co-star Mathew Baynton in this fun comedy-thriller about two office drones embroiled in a case of mistaken identity. After answering a lost mobile phone, Sam (Baynton), a figure cut closer to a Quentin Blake illustration than an Iron Man-style superhero, is burdened with the company of eager beaver colleague Phil (Corden) when he goes to the rescue of a hostage.

The evolving bromance has a familiar flavour, but it's by steering clear of complete spoofery that The Wrong Mans finds its surprisingly comfortable stride, somewhere between gags and action. The success of films like Kick-Ass suggests we're a public with a soft spot for have-a-go heroes, making Corden and Baynton's offering well gauged. It's the television equivalent of jelly: not particularly sophisticated, but a pleasant treat all the same.

Famous faces (David Harewood, Dougray Scott) are underutilised, sliding past the camera as if on a conveyor belt peopled by Corden's celebrity pals. Luckily, Baynton's impressive comic dexterity covers everything from deadpan to daft, tempering Corden's potentially dominating presence and making for a balanced double act.

James Corden and Mathew Baynton write and star in this new sitcom as Phil and Sam, two friends whose dull existences are complicated by the discovery of a strange mobile phone and an associated gangland hostage situation. These wrong men live in a weird grey twilight with a Belle & Sebastian soundtrack: stylish, but potentially at the expense of much actual comic substance. Corden is on top form with an uber-pathetic variation on his usual shtick, though, while the always brilliant Tom Basden plays the guys' nasty colleague.

James Corden's new six-part comedy caper is assured of a better reception than his last TV outing with the very iffy sketch show Horne & Corden. Maybe because he's got a new comedy writing partner and co-star in Mathew Baynton, of Horrible ­Histories, who played Deano in Gavin & Stacey. So this could well be a case of the wrong man(s), but the right Mat.

This is a hugely ­confident, well-plotted and hilarious new series. Imagine 24 written as a sitcom with Corden taking on the Kiefer ­Sutherland role.

The pair star as workers at Berkshire County Council whose lives are turned upside down when Sam (Baynton) witnesses a ­car crash - the first of many action- packed stunts that set this apart from the comedy run of the mill.

He finds a mobile phone at the crash scene and is drawn into a dangerous kidnapping conspiracy populated by real villains. Mail room boy Phil (Corden) is busting a gut to get involved.

Several years in the planning, the pair have worked all the angles and the action scenes are as convincing as the comedy.

The snow in the opening scene probably wasn't scripted but it gives it a wonderfully cinematic look, while the casting of David Harewood (long before he became a big star in Homeland) is another happy accident.

And just like 24, each episode ends with a massive cliff-hanger moment, guaranteeing you'll be back for more.

Love him or hate him, James Corden undeniably does have a range of talents - actor, writer and co-creator of some very funny comedy (we'll politely forget the car crash of his misguided BBC sketch show with Mathew Horne). And now, dontchaknow, he's come up with another comedy vehicle, The Wrong Mans (****), which had a very accomplished debut last night.

Corden, late of the National Theatre and Broadway, has co-written, with fellow Gavin & Stacey alumnus Mathew Baynton, a comedy thriller in the style of Simon Pegg and Joe Wright's Cornetto trilogy, with appreciative nods (in the title) to Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 thriller and, in camerawork and misfit leads, to Peep Show.

Baynton is nice but weedy Sam, who wakes up one wintry morning with the mother of a hangover, only to find his pushbike has been stolen so he has to walk to work, as a town planning and noise guidance adviser for Berkshire County Council. On his way, he's the only witness to a car crash and he picks up a ringing phone; a man issues threats and in later calls it's clear a woman has been kidnapped.

At work Sam takes postboy Phil (Corden) into his confidence. Phil is beside himself; he's a 31-year-old living at home with his mum and he keeps trying to organise fun days paint-balling or bowling with his colleagues (oblivious to the fact they all think he's a boring knob); for him, this mystery is his very own live-action Grand Theft Auto, and he convinces Sam not to call the police but to try to rescue the woman and become heroes.

The opening episode efficiently essayed the set-up, and there are some promising relationships to be explored in the following five weeks. Sarah Solemani (who was so brilliant in Him & Her) is Sam's boss, but also the girlfriend who recently dumped him because he was too needy, while Tom Basden is the horrible colleague we'd love to be taken down a peg or two.

Corden clearly has pulling power, as those names above suggest, and Dawn French, Nick Moran, Rebecca Front and Dougray Scott will appear in future episodes - although David Harewood, who appeared briefly last night, shot his scenes before his Homeland stardom. The opener had some neat twists and turns and ended on a great cliffhanger. Definitely one to stay with.

Just as the weather turns rotten, here's The Wrong Mans, a bit of fun with a smart enough script and some actual jokes. It's about two hapless chaps who get completely out of their depth in a Hitchcockian adventure with kidnappers, spies and gangsters. Nervous council employee Phil (played endearingly by Mathew Baynton of Horrible Histories) witnesses a car crash, picks up the victim's phone and gets mistaken for someone else by bad guys. His brash colleague Sam insists they "roll deep" and play things out.

It co-stars and is co-written by James Corden... wait, did I lose you there? I know: Corden is a divisive figure, who became so ubiquitous a few years ago that the very sight of his grinning face - shouting about his celebrity pals, flirting with Lily Allen, singing the England football team song, showing off at award ceremonies, etc - could induce sheer rage in otherwise reasonable people. While he always had his fans, there were as many who saw him as a representation of everything grim about modern celebrity culture. But, after an apologetic autobiography, an award-winning theatre run and the forthcoming biopic about Britain's Got Talent winner Paul Potts, Corden seems to be clawing his way out of the backlash. And the sheer energy of this new six-part series indicates that he's gone back to his strengths, co-writing himself a supporting part in an audience-pleasing entertainment, just as he did with Gavin & Stacey.

He is still, essentially, playing that Corden character that became so annoying, but the effect is lessened thanks to a strong plot, script and cast - full of familiar faces in cameo roles, presumably his celebrity pals.

This new comedy drama written by and starring James Corden and Horrible Histories' Mathew Baynton is quite good. What's remarkable is the wealth of on-screen talent involved, and I don't just mean Dawn French, Rebecca Front, Nick Moran, Homeland's David Harewood and Him & Her's Sarah Solemani. When you can employ Paul Higgins (The Thick of It) and Twenty Twelve's Vincent Franklin in the seemingly throwaway roles of traffic cops, then that is casting in depth. Taking its title from Hitchcock's 1956 thriller of mistaken identity, The Wrong Man, it stars Baynton as a Berkshire County Council office drudge accidentally mixed up in a criminal conspiracy. Corden is on his best form as his excitable colleague.

Report from the screening of The Wrong Mans

It's the half-hour comedy that has the sensibilities of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Mathew Baynton interview

The co-creator of James Corden's new BBC2 comedy thriller The Wrong Mans is preparing to be ubiquitous.