You could be forgiven for assuming that Matt Berry is just a man who has made a career out of saying things in a funny voice. Although it was Channel 4’s The IT Crowd that truly brought Berry’s anachronistic, thespian style to a national audience, he’s been knocking about the place far longer than that. Berry first appeared in the criminally cult Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace way back in 2004 and through a journey that has taken him through The Mighty Boosh, Snuff Box, The IT Crowd, Aqua Unit Patrol Squad and Portlandia, while still finding time for his own folk-prog-rock side project, Berry has finally landed his own show again, with Channel 4’s Toast of London. He is a man of many talents indeed; comedian, musician and decent Boss Nass impressionist if his sex face is anything to go by.
Berry stars as the eponymous Stephen Toast of London – solid pun there – the greatest actor you’ve never heard of. Constantly out of work, Toast is reduced to providing voiceovers for a company trying hook the Congo on cigarettes, dressing as Dickens to give bus tours and directing amateur productions of The Calendar Girls in Eastbourne. No wonder then that such a life has left Toast a depraved, misanthropic bastard. The bawdiness that has defined many of Berry’s more famous roles is here projected onto a seedy underbelly of the acting world that seems at once lewd, loutish and incredibly conservative.
Toast of London seems to have dropped out of 1979 and fallen straight into a Monday night slot – a manoeuvre which shows Channel 4 don’t have much hope for the show. The show’s look is all turtlenecks and the sort of facial hair that made Tom Selleck a household name. Then there’s the attitudes. Toast may be a bastard but unlike his fellow actor and arch-rival, Ray Purchase (Harry Peacock), he retains some degree of respectability. Purchase somehow manages to combine the depraved excesses of late seventies living with the rampant homophobia and conservatism of the decade that followed. Purchase is a figure so loathsome you expect him at any moment to declare his support for Enoch Powell. But in Toast, these guys are the butt of the joke; the show takes delight in nothing more than seeing these guys get their just desserts.
Toast is by no means a bad show. It’s better than most British comedy being produced right now, but that doesn’t mean what it used to. Toast tries to find its niche in combining the carnivalesque world of smut and debauchery with a well-polished veneer, and ends up feeling practically chaste by Channel 4’s standard.
Matt Berry remains a brilliant comedic actor; there is definitely more to him than a voice – although hearing him boom ‘Clem Fandango’ time and time again can send shivers down your spine. The writing and the performances of his supporting cast never get close to Berry’s level. Toast looks like it’s going to go the same way as most of Berry’s work, consigned to the archives of 4OD to find an afterlife as a cult classic. Here’s hoping it’s not too long before the man finds a show with writing worthy of the voice.
Benjamin Cook
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