Robert Weide, producer of Curb Your Enthusiasm, is the unlikely writer and director of this new comedy set in Watford in the late 1960s. Nick Frost stars as the accountant whose drab world is anything but swinging. He's lost his wife (Olivia Colman) and mislaid his self-esteem, leaving him trying to piece together his life.

Botched suicide attempts pop up a lot in films and TV and, here, the man putting his head in the noose and kicking away the stool is Jeremy Sloane, who has lost his job and his wife all in the same day.

Coincidentally, a similar event also opens the sitcom Uncle, which starts its terrestrial re-run on BBC One tonight.

But fate has other plans for Jeremy in this six-part comedy series specially created for actor Nick Frost by Curb Your Enthusiasm producer director Robert B Weide. (Weide also directed How To Lose Friends & Alienate People, starring Frost's friend Simon Pegg.)

Mr Sloane is set in 1969 in Watford - which is just far enough from London to have missed out on the Swinging Sixties and light years away from the glamour of Mad Men.

But it all looks glorious, confident and reassuringly expensive.

Tonight's double bill sees Mr Sloane get off to a rocky start in his new job as a substitute teacher and there are scenes set in a boozer that are filled with ­realistically snappy and rambling banter.

Sloane's friends include Peter Serafinowicz as gambling addict Ross, who is at the centre of a lovely running joke about the vagaries of 1960s-style parenting, while Olivia Colman appears in flashbacks as Sloane's wife Janet.

But even this TV Bafta darling is upstaged by Ophelia ­Lovibond, as Sloane's new love interest.

With an accent that's bang on the money, Robin is a groovy American half his age with a habit of bumping into him at his most embarrassing moments.

But she finds Sloane endearing, rather than disgusting - and you will, too.

Radio Times review

In the past decade Nick Frost has gone from being Simon Pegg's bumbling sidekick to a Hollywood film star in his own right. So it's a treat to have him back on the small screen in a comedy written especially for him by Curb Your Enthusiasm director/producer Robert B Weide.

Set in 1969 in buttoned-up Watford, Mr Sloane is about a chap so hapless he can't even succeed at his own suicide. In the opening scene he tries to hang himself but crashes to the floor, bringing half the ceiling with him. He's lost his job, his wife and is prone to rose-tinted daydreams at odds with horn-rimmed reality.

Although this first episode is short on belly laughs, it goes down as easily as a glass of Babycham thanks to a tip-top cast (including Olivia Colman as estranged spouse) and its deliciously drab setting.

Fame comes at a cost it would seem as the star of Sky Atlantic comedy Mr Sloane believes his co-star has been priced out of the market after winning big at the Baftas. The Sun reports Nick Frost as joking that Olivia Colman would be far too expensive to bring back as his on-screen wife for a second series after she scored a hat-trick at the TV awards. "We could never afford her now," said Frost. "If we do a second series, we'll have to have a chimp play my wife."

Like Nick Helm's BBC3 comedy Uncle, this period sitcom from Sky Atlantic begins with a botched suicide attempt, but (as with Uncle) the tone lightens significantly from there. Nick Frost plays the titular Sloane, a man out of time in a swinging 60s, separated from his wife and out of work, but ploughing on regardless. Created by Curb Your Enthusiasm alum Robert B Weide, it boasts a supporting cast including Peter Serafinowicz and Olivia Colman.

This phenomenally darker, third (and possibly final) series ended, as was mete, on a hanging note of cochineal bittersweet. Tom Hollander's Adam has pretty much lost the parish but regained a few friendships: friendships he didn't particularly want in the first place - archdeacon Rob, and lovely archfiend Colin (Steve Evets), than whom few supporting characters in a "sitcom" have ever been more subtly drawn or well portrayed. But their dogged belief in him, now reciprocated with genuine warmth, has been one of the many lessons on our journey through Rev, and at times it's been a gruelling one. Crucially, of course, he's regained the forgiving friendship of his wife, Alex: Olivia Colman, of course, with that trainstopping smile. "You just stopped being a vicar for Lent."

Never twee, always in surgeon-skilled hands, and it would be a crime greater than all those above [cop shows previously mentioned in the review] not to have someone thinking furiously about the machinations required to get Adam back to our screens for a fourth series.

Radio Times review

This episode strikes a different note from that we've come to expect from Rev; it's not delightful at all, it's sad and there's a bleakness to vicar Adam's life now that hovers on the upsetting.

But that's probably because Tom Hollander does such a wonderful job of making us care about Adam, a man who is all too human and fallible. The fallout from his indiscretion is instant and powerful as he faces the unwavering and angry gaze of his beloved Alex (Olivia Colman). Just when everything seems hopeless and Adam's world is about to crumble, a new member of the congregation is fortuitously on hand to help out.

Radio Times review

It's barely begun, and it's all over. Four measly episodes! Well, four quietly brilliant episodes, full of flim-flam and farce and staccato dialogue, but really, it's not enough.

The tone sails closer to comedy drama as some real feeling creeps in, both for dozy intern Will ("Yeah, cool, yeah, no worries..."), who may be my favourite character, and executive punchbag Ian (Hugh Bonneville). The latter's salary scandal is all over the papers, though another minor controversy, involving a Newsnight presenter in a short skirt, provides distraction on Twitter (#kneesnight).

Luckily, as we keep hearing, "Tony's pretty perky about this", but can Ian make it up to his one-time admirer Sally, last seen in Twenty Twelve? A cameo from Olivia Colman brings the answer.

Did W1A really need the brilliant Olivia Colman?

Olivia Colman was the best thing about Twenty Twelve, so it's understandable she should turn up in its sister sitcom about the BBC. But was her presence actually any help this time round?

Radio Times review

Hapless vicar Adam's hopes of rescuing the increasingly decrepit St Saviour's from imminent closure are given a boost when a Turner Prize-winning artist asks if he can unveil a new installation in the building. And he's prepared to make a substantial donation to the emergency fund...

It's good news, of course, but Adam being Adam (Tom Hollander, who also wrote the episode), he has to seek out new and inventive ways of sabotaging his professional and even his personal life, even when things seem to be going well.

He's adorable, of course, but sometimes you want to give him a jolly good shaking, particularly when he does something unforgivable and out of character, something that could jeopardise his relationship with wife Alex (Olivia Colman).