Interview: Martin Jarvis on Taking the Flak

Martin Jarvis on parodying a bombastic war reporter and playing the voice of God in his new comedy drama series Taking the Flak.

The problem is that if you tune in at 9.00pm for the godawful Krod, you won't get to see them because by 9.30pm you'll have fled the room, weeping over the demise of popular culture.

Last night's episode of Krod was the third. For those who succeeded in missing the first two, it's a fantasy set in some quasi-medieval realm of warriors and noblemen. One word for its comic style would be "crude". There's another, more obvious word, but we can't print it. A fat man says something stupid. A gay man says something camp. A young woman with big breasts says something naughty about sex. Krod plainly yearns to be Blackadder, but it comes across as if it were written by Baldrick.

If you lasted through to the end of Krod Mandoon you would have reached That Mitchell and Webb Look, which, three series in, is doing something rare among sketch shows: improving. The first two series were patchy - I might have said "hit-and-miss" but last night's episode featured a sketch lampooning reviewers who say that. Well, anyway: its hit-rate's up. The main characteristic of the show's humour is nerdish pedantry. If something improbable happens in a sketch, the characters won't follow comic convention and go with the flow; instead, they'll draw attention to it.

In one sketch, a man, played by David Mitchell, was having visions of the television chef Gary Rhodes - played by Robert Webb with a foot-high quiff. "Is that what Gary Rhodes looks like?" said Mitchell's character uncertainly. "No," beamed the vision, "but this is the best version of me that your imagination could piece together."

Another thing they do well: the good old-fashioned "subverting expectations" gag. One sketch was about a pair of sleazy snooker pundits reflecting on their time in the game.

"It's been me life," began one. "I've been obsessed with it, me whole life."

Pause. "That and snooker..."

After That Mitchell and Webb Look came the premiere of Psychoville. This is by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, two of the men who made The League of Gentlemen, a gruesome comedy-horror series about dangerous freaks from a remote village. Psychoville is a slight departure: it's a gruesome comedy-horror series about dangerous freaks from all over the country.

Among them are a midwife (Dawn French) who looks after a doll as if it were a real baby, a one-handed clown (Shearsmith) who bullies children, and a man (Pemberton) whose obsession with historical murders is exceeded in creepiness only by his uncommonly close relationship with his mother.

In its less queasy moments this first episode was fairly funny. Although casting directors prefer to give us Dawn French as a cuddlesome yokel, she's so much better as a seething nutcase - remember Murder Most Horrid. Print probably won't do justice to the menace she gave the final line in this exchange:

Midwife: "This bit at the top of the baby's head is called the soft spot."

Woman: "You mean the fontanelle."

Midwife: "What's that, Miriam?"

Woman: "My name's Kate."

Midwife: "Oh I'm sorry, I thought you were DOCTOR MIRIAM STOPPARD."

Psychoville isn't some chortling spoof of the horror genre; it genuinely is eerie. Then again, perhaps "horror" is the wrong word. The worry is not that you're about to see something scary, but that you're about to see something revolting. Inventively revolting. You want to turn over before something hideous happens, but you want to keep watching to find out what it is - and at least you rest safe in the knowledge that Krod Mandoon is already behind you in the night's schedule.

In a soul-sapping television tradition of yesteryear, practically every sitcom would do a dire summer special in which the regular characters went to Spain and had unfunny encounters with the locals. Benidorm is like that in every single episode. This mirth-free atrocity about the antics of a gaggle of British oafs staying in the Spanish holiday resort has been running for two series, and returns tonight with an hour-long one-off. Sample japes: Mick (Steve Pemberton) wets himself in a police car, and Madge (Sheila Reid) is kidnapped while hitching a lift to hospital. Strange things, budgets: ITV apparently doesn't have enough money to make more of The South Bank Show, but it does have enough to persist with this twaddle.

Last night's Pulling was a special, hour-long episode to bring to an end a sitcom that, for two series, has been the anti-Friends: single men and women in their thirties who are not cuddly and chummy and cute, but washed-up and bitchy and sour as vinegar.

The episode was a rush of couplings and un-couplings. Donna (Sharon Horgan), the harpy at Pulling's shrivelled heart, rowed with her boyfriend, made a play for her ex, proposed to her boyfriend, went back to her ex... By the credits their fate still wasn't resolved. Well, Pulling was never likely to give us a happy ending.

The most crass lines were sometimes the weakest: "I'm a lot deeper than I thought," bragged Donna. Comedy pause. "Does this dress make my nipples stick out enough?" The best lines tended to be the lighter, sillier ones, such as when the drippy Greg (Tom Brooke) simpered, "What's your favourite kind of puppy? I like brown. They're more loyal."

It's a pity Pulling's gone. Supposedly the commissioners scrapped it because it looked out of place on BBC Three. Pulling was funny, smart and generally well-written. So yes, the commissioners were right.

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