Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Matt Berry, Doon Mackichan, Fred Armisen, Tim Downie, Shazad Latif, Cecilia Appiah, Robert Bathurst, Rashida Jones, Isaura Barbé-Brown, Larry David, Natasia Demetriou, Kayvan Novak, Adrian Lukas, Harry Peacock, Aiden Turner, Colin McFarlane, Morgana Robinson, Benedict Wong, Tracey Ann Oberman, Freddie Annobil-Dodoo, Nigel Betts, Jaime Barbakoff, Guy Coombes, Gina Bellman, Freddie Fox, Neil Hudson, Jennifer Armour, Bill Hader, Greg Canestrari, Caroline Hacker, Flaminia Cinque, Mara Huff, Hanako Footman, Stuart Milligan, Belinda Stewart-Wilson, Paul Rudd.
Life is absurd, and the part we play in history’s unfolding is nothing more than farce. Pay no attention to those who seriously declare that they have got their life together, pay no heed to the seemingly cool and collected, for they are not calm, they just wear the astonishment and bewilderment of the age better than those who seek assurance that the show is a production of worth and not some skit dreamed up in the back of a celestial’s Ford Escort.
Few comedies explain the heart and reason of human farce, in America you have to look at series such as Frasier and M*A*S*H to find the soul of humanity at its most laughable, the self-important potency of pomposity pricked by the embarrassing situation, and whilst in Britain audiences have been granted more chance to see what amounts to a Beckett-Dickens like hybrid of the incompetent and foolish being granted their comeuppance, there is perhaps no one like Stephen Toast to show just how the thinking man can inhabit the soul of the absurd and the reasonable in one passionate display of acting brilliance.
Stephen Toast, the creation of the sublime Matt Berry, is an actor placed on stage surrounded by the excess of caricature, and one to whom the audience can identify with in such a way that it captures the spirit of characters such as Basil Fawlty, Harold Steptoe, and even to an extent Tony Hancock’s own grandstanding in his larger-than-life persona on screen.
Whilst Toast of London is to be regarded as satire on the view of life of someone slightly out of touch in the modern age, the rumble of the joke of not having heard of many of the familiar names never failing to amuse and the antics of many of his peers and his foes leaving him both frustrated and annoyed, seeking revenge in the only way possible by sleeping with the wife of an enemy, it is to Toast of Tinseltown that the bar is raised higher, and one in which reflects with huge appeal Matt Berry’s own life as one who is often known more for his voice over work rather than for superb characterisations he has built in programmes such as The IT Crowd, What We Do In The Shadows and Year Of The Rabbit.
It is the reflection of the character, a wonderfully rich exaggerated persona, that catches the eye as Stephen Toast makes his way to America to finally receive the respect he feels he deserves. The problem is that those he left behind, his friend and landlord Ed Howzer-Black, played with charm by Robert Bathurst, Danny Bear and Clem Fandango, the sensational Tim Downie and Shazad Latif respectfully, and Doon Mackichan taking on the double role of Toast’s agents Jane Plough and Brooke Hooberman, still find ways to throw the actor’s life into confusion and reckless anger. It is this element that connects the two series with honour: and as special guests, including Fred Armisen as Toast’s new L.A. Landlord Russ Nightlife, Rashida Jones as Billy Tarzan, Freddie Fox, Larry David, Natasia Demetriou, Kayvan Novak, Gina Bellman, Hanako Footman, and Bill Hader add to the general mayhem and seismic mockery, so it must be noted that Toast of Tinseltown is satire at its very best, one that gets under the soul of the human expression, of parody of our expectations, and the distorter of the acting ambition.
A terrific series and one that once more frames just how important Matt Berry is the continued renaissance of British comedy in the last decade.
Ian D. Hall