Simon Day

If any sitcom can get you to laugh out loud - properly cackle - in its pilot episode, that has to be a good sign. There were iffy spells in this script from Dan Maier, but they're overlookable. The main thing is, it delivered great moments, courtesy of the regulars visiting the upstairs room of a local pub on the evening of a "Meet the Police" event. It doesn't hurt that both drinkers and visitors are played by a remarkable cast.

If I tell you Simon Day from The Fast Show contributes a (very funny) cameo and Reece Shearsmith from The League of Gentlemen doesn't appear until two-thirds of the way through, you'll get the idea.

Set above a village pub and starring a motley crew of British TV's bit-part stars, there's a lot of goodwill riding on The Function Room to work. Comic's comic Kevin Eldon takes the lead as local bobby Tony Marks, playing the unlikely straight man in a roomful of idiots as he hosts a daft residents' meeting on home security. Naturally, the agenda is hijacked to resolve a whodunnit on the mysterious identity of the 'shit egg killer' - the local kook terrorising victims by chucking parcels of turd through their windows. Reece Shearsmith, Simon Day and Josephine Butler all take a turn at scene-stealing, but this is a conventional studio sitcom with all the traits that genre brings: gentle jokes, obvious characters and an audience always laughing harder than you are.

The Function Room is a cheerfully traditional and often very funny studio sitcom set in a pub, and starring a host of familiar comedy actors including The Vicar of Dibley's James Fleet, The League of Gentlemen's Reece Shearsmith, The Inbetweeners' Blake Harrison, The Fast Show's Simon Day (once again playing a pub know-it-all) and every-comedy-of-the-last-fifteen-years' Kevin Eldon.

The sort of uproariously gag-heavy sitcom that encourages deserved rounds of applause from its studio audience, it's definitely a step in the right direction for Channel 4, and if they have any sense - which they don't - they'll commission 
a series.

I lost count, during The Function Room (Channel 4, Sunday), how many times the uniformly excellent cast said "shit" ... Admittedly, the police and residents meeting in a pub sought to crack the case of the so-called Shit-Egg Killer, a venal hurler of uncouth missiles through blameless suburban windows. They won't use that nickname in the press, counselled Kevin Eldon's weary-eyed copper. Yeah, no one puts shit in the papers, a sarky resident quipped. Not even the Daily Mail.

Writer Dan Maier and the cast were enjoying themselves so much it was infectious. "A phalanx of youths have been causing ructions in my cul-de-sac," complained an out-of-work camp thesp plummily, introducing a Crimewatch-meets-Mrs-Slocombe vibe. It's nice to see Simon Day playing another pub bore. He wasn't saying that talcum powder is made from human skulls, just noting that episodes of ethnic cleansing are followed by rises in global talc production. I'm not sure where Maier goes after this pilot, but I really want to find out. Commission a series, Channel 4!

My secret life: Simon Day, 50, comedian

'I'm good with a water cannon'.

The Simon Day Show, Radio 4, Thursday

Welcome back, Mr Day. It's never less than a bracing ride.

Simon Day's offbeat situation comedy, written by and starring him. It all happens in a small theatre, the Mallard. It's changed since Tommy Cockles (Day) last played there. There's a new owner, he's Nigerian and has big plans for the place. There's a new sound man and he's not the easy-going, semi-anarchist of old. This one used to be a policeman and he's strict about what can and cannot be done. And where's Catherine, the receptionist, who used to make the wheels go round? She's off to more exotic climes, to find herself, leaving Tommy bewildered.

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