Stag preview

The hunters become the hunted as each one is horribly eliminated, one gobby moron at a time.

Interview: cast of Stag

TV's latest genre-busting series sees a Highlands bachelor weekend become a bloody quest for survival. We brave the mud and drizzle to meet its cast.

Julia Davis's cavalcade of cruelty, violence and suggestions for how Jane Austen might have described vaginas reaches the end of a relentless two-parter. Graham adores Helene, a desire thwarted by his estranged wife and Helene's new suitor, the witchfinder-y pastor. The cast give their all, notably Rufus Jones, whose depiction of Graham's impotence is immensely ballsy. But most comedies spend whole episodes building up to the sort of vulgar explosion Hunderby rams into every scene. Less is sometimes more.

The deliciousness of a bubbly milk, however bubbly, cannot match that of the script and performances in this subversion of period dramas, set on a country estate in 1831 and home to housekeeper Dorothy, who Norman Bates would admire.

Hunderby is a wolf in a stiff corset, its teeth exquisite blades of language which shred characters' dignity and rip into Sunday night bonnet dramas, writers Julia Davis and Barunka O'Shaughnessy crafting sentences which glory in lampooning the literature of that time. A delirious and hysterical work of Gothic imagination to rival Wednesday Addams' diary - I had tears running down both sets of cheeks.

The first of this two part special assembles the scheming of Dorothy, the doomed love affair of Dr Foggerty (Rufus Jones) and Helene (Alexandra Roach), the simpering Hester (Rosie Cavaliero, more on her later), and a violent monkey. A monkey, Rufus Jones tells me, that between takes would wear a smoking jacket and a fez. That's normal by this show's standards.

How the BBC turned down Hunderby

The BBC turned down the chance to make Hunderby, creator Julia Davis has revealed. And she had sack Alexander Armstrong from the key role of Doctor Foggerty, after she found a more suitable actor in Rufus Jones.

A strange solo outing for Guy Jenkin, co-writer of Ballot Monkeys. On an RAF base in the British countryside, a squadron who used to fly bombers in Afghanistan now sit controlling drones. In this, er, pilot episode, a hit on a high-profile jihadi turns bad, and it all goes a bit Thick of It as the details leak out. Can comedy flow from such a dark and airless subject? Vincent Franklin, Rufus Jones and a particularly fine Hugh Skinner - a dashing toff here, instead of his dim one in W1A - lead what proves to be a hopeless mission.

Radio Times review

A great cast - Vincent Franklin from Cucumber, Hugh Skinner (dumb Will in W1A), and Rufus Jones (camp David, also in W1A) do their best in this queasy sitcom about drone pilots.

The bored little group are closeted in a cabin on a bleak airfield, their days characterised by long stretches of yawning boredom punctuated by administering sudden death in the Middle East, and sometimes they get it wrong.

It's a black comedy (there's a very off-colour gag about social services) but it's not black enough and consequently not funny enough. It's the kind of thing Charlie Brooker would do ruthlessly well, yet writer Guy Jenkin (Ballot Monkeys and Drop the Dead Donkey) lets it drift into farce.

The glorious return of the BBC's self-flagellating sitcom, whose second series begins with a one-hour special. Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) and co prepare for the impending royal visit of the Prince of Wales. Elsewhere, Jessica Hynes's viciously stupid Head of BBC Brand, Siobhan Sharpe, attempts to mash-up the Beeb and Wimbledon, Entertainment Format Producer David Wilkes (Rufus Jones) has a title but not a show, and lovable doofus Will the intern might just have solved everyone's problems by possessing a sister.

Video - W1A: Back to poke fun at the Beeb

It's the "mockumentary" which does not need to aim far to hit its target. W1A is a comedy which satirises the BBC, and it's back for a second series, which starts tonight on BBC Two at 9pm. BBC Breakfast was joined by two of its stars, Hugh Skinner and Rufus Jones.