Radio Times review

Actor Steven Toast is buried alive on a film set (it's a long story) and flashes back to his wedding day on a Thai beach. His speech to the guests and his bored bride (played by Amanda Donohoe) is a litany of the actors who've wronged him, though he puts this in more choice language: "Colin Firth... Hugh Bonneville... Trevor Eve... Martin Shaw."

In an underpowered, thinly written episode with a sprinkling of good moments, Toast (Matt Berry) is offered a job in a Hollywood movie on the strict understanding he doesn't look at or eat or drink within two miles of its megastar lead actor, Max Gland. And we get a disturbing glimpse into the home life of Toast's agent, Jane Plough (pronounced "Pluff").

Toast of London is the funniest thing on telly, while also being blithering nonsense of the highest order. This week the travails of struggling actor Steven Toast (Matt Berry) involved an acid trip and a very funny running joke about the Masons. There's a bit of Father Ted in Toast -- no surprise, since it was co-created by Arthur Mathews, but it's most reminiscent of the plays what Ernie Wise used to write on The Morecambe and Wise Show. With added orgies.

Radio Times review

Steven Toast is in awe of his old friend Axel Jacklin (played by the excellent Terry Mynott as a constipated-sounding James Mason), Britain's finest exponent of acting in high winds.

But if something were ever to happen to Axel, then Toast could step into his shoes, as he's Britain's second finest exponent of acting in high winds. Of course, Axel dies, hurled across the studio to his doom in a windy re-creation of Master and Commander.

There's a great set piece as Toast (Matt Berry) and his nemesis Ray Purchase (Harry Peacock) both audition to be the deceased Axel's replacement, in front of a nuclear-strength wind machine. It's an old-fashioned bit of comic idiocy, the kind of daftness Toast does so well.

This week, Toast ruins his reputation, along with the 60-year run of West End whodunnit The Moose Trap, by revealing the murderer's identity in an interview on Woman's Hour. Matt Berry's magnificent intonation aside, it's the little details that give this sitcom its appeal, like the characters' names (The Moose Trap's cast includes Ken Suggestion and Penny Traitor), and the ambience of Toast's retro, thesp-ridden London, which for all the modern references still feels like something from a mid 20th-century Iris Murdoch novel.

Radio Times review

Overtired after an all-nighter in the studio doing "Sat Nav for the Elderly" ("Abbotsbury...Abingdon...Acton") bumptious actor/voiceover artist Steven Toast accidentally reveals on Woman's Hour the name of the murderer in Anthea Crippen's creaky old play The Moose Trap. So, after a 60-year run, attendances dwindle and Toast's chance of a West End comeback as Inspector Attenborough are torpedoed.

Maybe Toast is too insider-y for some, though it's not as full of actors' inside jokes as you might think, but when it soars, it hits the comedy sun. There's a good running gag about Breaking Bad bores, and Toast (Matt Berry) has a catastrophic encounter with Jeremy Paxman (The Mimic's Terry Mynott) when he auditions for the job of the man who shouts out the contestants' names on a "university quiz."

Toast of London review

Accept Toast of London for what it is: an inexplicable romp through an alternate London. For fans of surrealist humour this could be your cup of tea (not one worth risking attempting to steal your flatmate's milk for) and for those perplexed by The Mighty Boosh and the like - you have been warned.

After a contretemps while filming an advert, Toast's arch enemy Ray Purchase finds cause to grass up him to "the tax people", and because agent Jane Plough has been less than diligent with his affairs, it's up to Toast to somehow stump up £250,000 or face the consequences. Thoroughly disillusioned by the acting game, he decides to have a crack at directing instead, taking on a production of Calendar Girls. But his aggressive, musty directing style doesn't sit too well with his genteel cast.

Radio Times review

Pompous actor Steven Toast's nemesis, Ray Purchase, has ratted him out to The Tax People, so he owes £250,000 and he needs to find work, fast.

But suitable jobs are thin on the ground. Even John Midsomer Murders Nettles and has resorted to poaching to make ends meet. (Yes, that really is the John Nettles in a guest cameo).

In desperation, Toast's magnificently raddled agent, Jane Plough (Doon Mackichan) suggests that her client might like to direct a stage version of Calendar Girls.

Matt Berry as Toast is at his glorious best when he launches into tirades of scene-chewing pomposity. His outrageous treatment of the Calendar Girls women ("I intend to treat these people like cattle") will make your eyes water.

Toast Of London: funniest UK sitcom nobody's watching

Should you be watching Matt Berry comedy show Toast Of London on Channel 4? In the words of Stephen Toast... Yes!

How to describe Steven Toast, the man/beast at the centre of the absurd but funny Toast of London? He is, in hair and moustache, a postmodern, and quite possibly post-mortem, version of Dickie Davies, who hosted ITV's World of Sport with such aplomb from 1965-85. Toast has Dickie Davies eyes and a Mallen streak in the middle of his bouffant. He has an Actor's voice, designed to reach the cheap seats and no longer capable of modifying its volume. He sounds, at all times, like a repertory version of Patrick Allen, the voice actor who brought an apocalyptic note to the public information film Protect and Survive, as well as scaring an entire generation into buying Barratt homes.

Matt Berry, who plays Toast, is just about old enough to remember Dickie hosting the grappling on a damp Saturday afternoon but he's also a voice-over artist in real life, toiling in the service of volcanic mineral water and financial services. Toast the character (created by Berry and Father Ted co-writer Arthur Mathews) is a distorted echo from those Soho casting calls, rendered from the dreamscape of an insecure thespian -- a place where almost everything that is said is unsayable in polite company. It is also the funniest thing going, with Berry's clowning rendered absurdly plausible thanks to the efforts of Tracy-Ann Oberman and Louise Jameson as the leonine Toast's gamey co-conspirators.