Toast keeps you tickled

CHANNEL surfing has become a dispiriting experience of late, but sometimes a diamond in the rough can still be found.
On SBS 2 around 10pm on a recent Sunday night, the sight of Matt Berry’s bearded bonce appeared on the screen, which was more than enough to stop the remote in its tracks.
It turns out Berry (The IT Crowd) has his own comedy series, Toast of London. And comedy gold it is.
Berry stars as Stephen Toast a formally trained actor struggling to keep a career alive on the boards of the West End or on film sets, while doing whatever demeaning jobs he can find to keep his head above water.
This isn’t a show about well-crafted scripts or seamless plots. It’s about trying to get the biggest laugh possible regardless of taste.
The language is appalling – it would make a dockside worker blush. The violence would shame Scorsese. But when you will do anything for a laugh, taste and sophistication goes out the window.
Matt Berry’s over-the-top characters need a suitable stage on which they can shine. Toast gives him full rein to unleash the preposterous personality that his characters all seem to possess.
Toast of London seems to have disappeared from our screens as quickly as it came – and I’d suggest that there is no guarantee it will return.
Box set DVDs look like the go for some winter Toast that definitely won’t leave you cold.
– Danny Buttler