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Mathew Horne has admitted that he was thrilled to land a role in a new drama about Culture Club.

A Cinema Near You, Radio 4, review

Gillian Reynolds reviews Radio 4's comedy pilot A Cinema Near You, starring Mathew Horne and Caroline Quentin, plus the rest of the week's radio.

Mathew Horne (of Gavin & Stacey TV fame) plays Alex, a struggling young cinema manager in this new comedy by Simon (Men Behaving Badly) Nye. Here's the situation: Alex has to promote a forthcoming attraction, an arty Swedish film. But no one's interested, not even Mrs Duke (Caroline Quentin), the cinema's rambly, elderly owner, or neighbouring café boss Jane (Mel Hudson), who fancies him. Here's a tip: look at the cast. Consider author's other work (translations of Molière and Dario Fo, films, TV, scholarly studies of painters, awards). This one (produced by Jane Berthoud and Simon Mayhew-Archer) may go far.

Anyone who knows Justin Lee Collins and the horror of his Bring Back... programmes will be relieved to know that this new mixture of chat and variety show is nowhere near as bad as it might have been. Filmed in front of a young audience of 300-odd people at the plush Rivoli Ballroom in south London, it is full of good humour and high spirits. "I wanted the show to feel like a circus," he says, "with me as the ringmaster." During the run of the series, he will play darts with Meat Loaf and Ewan McGregor, interview Gok Wan and Mathew Horne, compliment Sharon Osborne on her plastic surgery and organise an offbeat dance competition. The most pleasant surprise of all is that he doesn't scream and shout with artificial exuberance.

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If you missed season three of this ever-wonderful family sitcom, you can catch the entire run tonight. Some of the dynamics of the show are changing: Nessa (Ruth Jones) seems less amenable, Mick (Larry Lamb) a little spikier (shades of his EastEnders character?) and Bryn (Rob Brydon) even stranger, but it remains sweet-natured. As the final series opens, Gavin (Mathew Horne) has started a new job in Cardiff so Stacey (Joanna Page) is back at home in Barry and a christening is being planned for baby Neil, but there's a shock in store for his father, Smithy (James Corden).

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There's a certain kind of comedy snob who, if you admit to loving slapstick, looks pityingly at you as if you'd said lollipops were your favourite food. But think of the great sitcom moments and they're physical: Del Boy falling through that bar, Basil Fawlty thrashing his car with a branch, David Brent's dance... And that's before you get to the surrealism of, say, Monty Python's fish-slapping. So a big ker-tish on the cymbals to this one-off doc devoted to "the universal language of comedy". DVDs weren't available as we went to press, but we're promised a feast of clips, from Buster Keaton's collapsing house onwards, as well as sage comments from the likes of Vic Reeves, Ben Miller and Gavin & Stacey's Mathew Horne. And a great, clanging frying pan in the face for anyone who says it's childish.

As Stacey (Joanna Page) frets over her efforts to get pregnant, Gavin (Mathew Horne) plays host to his Essex chums on a boys' night out in Cardiff, in the sublime comedy series about the eponymous Anglo-Welsh couple. Uncle Bryn (the incomparable Rob Brydon) turns his house into a "bachelors' paradise" for Gavin's friends, and grows dizzy with excitement at being surrounded by a whole gang of Essex scamps. "I feel like Fagin," he quivers.