Year Of The Rabbit, C4
★★★★★
Anyone who enjoyed the excellent Martin Kemp episode of BBC3’s Murder In Successville will have loved this new comedy drama from Matt Berry.
It had already been described in the pre-show publicity as “the Victorian Sweeney” and “Ripper Street meets The Naked Gun”.
If this first episode was anything to go by, people will soon be calling it something else: the best new comedy of 2019.
It was gloriously stupid, tightly written, superbly acted and absolutely filthy.
Berry plays our hero, the one-eyebrowed (his dog chewed the other one off last Christmas), hard-drinking Detective Inspector Rabbit.
Imagine what Oliver Reed’s Bill Sikes would have been like if he’d become a policeman and bought himself a snazzy electric blue overcoat.
Rabbit’s two sidekicks are rookie Wilbur Strauss, a criminology graduate played by Freddie Fox, and his boss’s adoptive daughter Mabel Wisbech, played by the show-stealing Susan Wokoma.
The fine supporting cast includes New Tricks star Alun Armstrong and character actor Paul Kaye and EastEnders regular Ann Mitchell, as a hard-bitten Cockney landlady.
As if that wasn’t enough, Keeley Hawes showed up at the end.
Her character Lydia appears to be a sinister and murderous gang boss who will crush anyone in her path.
Having spent a few months playing a Tory MP last year, I’m guessing that wasn’t too much of stretch for Keeley.
