Stephen Merchant on Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

Marenghi is setting out to seem bad when it's actually done with great skill.

Drama Four Lives proves Merchant has finally overtaken Gervais

The former collaborators who brought the world The Office are both back on screen - and in very different shows. Gervais's career might have started out bigger and brasher, writes Ed Cumming, but the brilliant new BBC drama Four Lives shows that Stephen Merchant is the tortoise to his old partner's hare.

Stephen Merchant stopped by police while filming

Stephen Merchant has revealed he was stopped by police as he filmed a scene in the middle of Bristol because they thought the black water pistols were real guns.

Victoria Coren Mitchell: thank heavens for Christopher Walken

I'm very much enjoying Stephen Merchant's new comedy drama The Outlaws on BBC One.

Mackenzie Crook wants to cast Office stars in Gummidge

After shooting to fame 20 years ago, the stars of The Office have all gone their separate ways - with plenty of success. But Mackenzie Crook would love to bring Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant back together on his own baby, Worzel Gummidge.

The chief problem with The Outlaws is that none of them is very likeable. Writer Stephen Merchant plays Greg, a solicitor arrested in his car with a prostitute. Eleanor Tomlinson is a social media junkie, in every sense, with a vicious temper, and Christopher Walken is an alcoholic fraudster who talks like a Prohibition-era gangster.

There's barely any story. Last week someone stole some money and hid it, this week a couple of other people found it. We're supposed to be drawn into the characters' lives. But I'd cross the road to avoid most of them.

It's not every day you get to see Christopher Walken ambling about a community project in Bristol. What next: Joe Pesci chugging in Birmingham's Bullring? New BBC One six-part dramedy The Outlaws, starring, co-written and directed by Bristolian Stephen Merchant (The Office; Extras; Hello Ladies), certainly hasn't stinted on casting: Dolly Wells, Clare Perkins, Eleanor Tomlinson, Darren Boyd, Gamba Cole, with Claes Bang and Richard E Grant to come. The premise is that seven small-fry lawbreakers are thrown together to renovate a building as community service in Bristol. So far, so aged-up, earthbound Misfits. Rani, "studious Asian good girl" turned shoplifter, played by Rhianne Barreto, observes: "Everyone's a type: rightwing blowhard, leftwing militant, celebutante, shifty old timer." There's also Merchant as a dweeb solicitor, and Jessica Gunning as an officious overseer, who is inevitably reminiscent of Gareth from The Office, with an added soupçon of civic authority.

I'd wondered if Walken's Hollywood star power would swamp things, but in the overstuffed opener his rogue barely gets a look-in. While some jokes worked, others didn't: one about "working harder than a prostitute with two mattresses" was Jeremy Clarkson-worthy (and no, making it come out of Walken's mouth doesn't make it any funnier). When another (unconnected) sex worker theme pops up in the second episode (both are available), it starts feeling borderline creepy.

Merchant has forged his own path since working with Ricky Gervais, but in The Outlaws opener, too many genres are crudely bolted together: comedy, crime, heartwarming drama, a bizarre segue into gangland Top Boy territory. The second episode, though, is a significant (funnier, tighter) improvement. I'll be sticking around, not least for Walken's Transylvanian mini-break of a face incongruously bobbing around the Bristol environs.