--- title: "Toast of London" year: 2013 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/toast-of-london" fi1m_score: 80 critics_score: 74 critics_reviews: 8 published: "2026-09-17T02:57:37.983088+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T02:57:50.372480+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Toast of London (2013) Created by Matt Berry, Arthur Mathews · 30m · Comedy **Fi1m score: 80** · Critics 74 from 8 reviews *In a sentence:* A middle-aged actor shouts at a young man called Clem Fandango in a recording booth, and it never stops being funny > Matt Berry and Arthur Mathews build a whole sitcom around one vain, furious, magnificently spoken failure, and Berry plays him as if his life depended on it. It is loud, silly and often very funny; it is also assembled from sketches, and the joins show. ## Synopsis Steven Toast (Matt Berry) is a middle-aged London stage actor with a booming voice, a bad wig and a firm belief that he is one of the great performers of his generation. Nobody else believes it. His agent Jane Plough (Doon Mackichan) keeps sending him to a Soho recording studio, where two young men, Clem Fandango (Shazad Latif) and Danny Bear (Tim Downie), direct him through voiceover jobs he considers beneath him. At home he shares a flat with Ed Howzer-Black (Robert Bathurst), a fellow actor of similar vintage and gentler temper. Wherever he goes, his rival Ray Purchase is already there, doing better. Toast wants a proper role, a good review and the respect of his profession. What stands in the way is Toast. ## Review Steven Toast is an actor of a kind the British theatre used to produce in quantity: florid, self-regarding, forever on the edge of a comeback that will not arrive. Matt Berry and Arthur Mathews, who co-created *Father Ted*, have written him a sitcom in which he is paid, over and over, to say one word into a microphone, and treats each session as an insult to his art. That is the whole engine of *Toast of London*, and it runs for three series of six half-hours without ever quite running out of fuel. It is a good deal funnier than most British comedy of its decade. It is also, by design or by accident, a collection of bits, and some episodes are four unfinished ideas wearing a coat. The recording booth is where the show lives. Clem Fandango (Shazad Latif) and Danny Bear (Tim Downie) sit behind the glass, young, patient and faintly baffled, and ask Toast to do it again. Toast, who cannot hear the word “again” without hearing an accusation, drops his voice an octave and refuses. We laughed out loud, on a weeknight, alone, at a man saying “yes” in slightly the wrong way, and then felt we had been had by something very simple. That is Berry’s trick. He has a voice that sounds like a cathedral organ played by someone who has been drinking, and he knows precisely how much of it to use. Toast’s rage is always a size too large for what has provoked it, and the gap is the joke. Around him the cast plays it dead straight, which is the only way this material works. Robert Bathurst’s Ed Howzer-Black is the flatmate, an actor of the same age who has made his peace with obscurity and spends his days in a dressing gown offering advice nobody asked for. Bathurst underplays so thoroughly that Berry seems louder by contrast. Doon Mackichan’s Jane Plough, the agent, treats Toast as a mildly disappointing pet. Ray Purchase, the rival, is played as a walking sneer in a good coat, and the two men’s hatred of each other is the closest thing the show has to a love story. Real people wander through as themselves, among them Lorraine Kelly, Peter Davison and Jon Hamm, and the show does not bother to explain why. Michael Cumming directs it to look cheap on purpose. The flat is brown and over-furnished, the studio is a box, and the outside world seems to have been built from whatever was left in the Channel’s props cupboard. Then every so often the show stops, the lights go saturated and Berry sings, a full song in a lounge that appears to exist nowhere, and the whole thing is suddenly handsome. Those interludes are the best-looking thing in it and the strangest, and they tell you the show has more ambition than its sets admit to. Rachel Springett produces, and the half-hours are cut tight; nothing outstays its welcome by more than a minute. The complaint is the one the show invites. Mathews and Berry write in sketches, and the connecting tissue is thin. An episode will set up a plot about a play, wander off into a surreal digression involving a fear therapist (Alan Ford, wonderfully dour), and forget to come back. Some of the sillier names and voices are asked to carry more weight than a name or a voice can. A handful of the gags depend on a certificate-15 bluntness that lands the first time and not the third. The Telegraph found the opening episode tipped from promising into merely odd, and while we disagree, we can see the moment they mean. Set against the shows it obviously descends from, it sits comfortably. It has *Father Ted*’s rhythm, men who are certain and wrong, arguing in a room, and it has the deliberate shoddiness of Berry’s earlier work, though with a lead character who is a person rather than a costume. Toast, unlike most sitcom monsters, is occasionally allowed to be sad, and Berry can do that too, briefly, before the shouting resumes. Watch two episodes at a sitting rather than six. Toast is best in doses, like most people who talk that loudly. *Fi1m score 80, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics like Toast of London, and the praise gathers almost entirely around Matt Berry. Reviewers describe his Steven Toast, a pompous and failing actor, as the engine of the show, and note the pathos he finds under the egotism. The surreal humour is the other constant: the silly voices, the visual gags, the voiceover sessions and the running jokes that reward a second viewing. Those who follow it into the second series find it sillier and more assured, and two treat it as a cult sitcom that too few people have seen. The spread is wide but lopsided. The lone dissent comes from The Telegraph, which finds the opening episode starts promisingly and then tips into overblown surreality that stops being funny. Radio Times, though positive, has a milder version of the same worry, calling the humour scattergun at times. Everyone else lands between good and very good, with reservations about pitch rather than about the central performance. ### Reviews we read (8) - **Empire**, William Thomas (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the second series of the stupendously silly and surreal sitcom even more demented than the first, fresh from its Rose d’Or win. It packs in riffs on The Exorcist and gives a backstory to the walking meme Clem Fandango. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/tv/reviews/toast-london-review/) - **The Times**, Andrew Billen (★★★★☆): The critic praised Matt Berry as the egotistical actor Steven Toast, calling the surreal sitcom a delight that celebrates a certain type of Seventies thespian. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/tv-review-toast-of-london-peep-show-5hxktjdfkbk) - **The Guardian** (85/100, inferred): The critic praises the show's absurd humor and Matt Berry's performance as Steven Toast, calling the series a joyous lolathon that gets funnier throughout. They single out the creative puns, surreal situations like beak-keeping, and overall imaginative surreality for praise. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/oct/21/toast-of-london-tv-review) - **Radio Times**, Jack Seale (70/100, inferred): The critic praises Matt Berry's talent finally getting a full series showcase as the pompous actor Steven Toast. They highlight the show's absurd visual gags, silly voices, and surreal elements but note it can feel scattergun at times. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/comedy/that-week-on-tv-educating-yorkshire-c4-toast-of-london-c4/) - **The Independent**, Fiona Sturges (70/100, inferred): The critic called the pilot promising, noting its absurdist tone with pedigree from the writers and Matt Berry's balance of egotism and pathos, highlighted by a terrific voiceover audition scene. [Read](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/last-night-s-viewing-toast-of-london-channel-4-our-war-bbc3-8063320.html) - **The Telegraph**, Chris Harvey (30/100, inferred): The critic was disappointed by the series premiere, finding it started promisingly but descended into overblown surreality that was not funny. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10389609/Toast-of-London-episode-one-Channel-4-review.html) - **Digital Spy**, Simon Reynolds (85/100, inferred): The piece positions Toast of London as an underrated gem and the funniest sitcom many have missed, highlighting its surreal humor, memorable characters, and Berry's lead performance in the vein of classic British sitcoms. It calls the show essential viewing for comedy fans ahead of series two. [Read](https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a600283/the-best-tv-shows-you-might-have-missed-toast-of-london/) - **Den of Geek**, Rob Smedley (80/100, inferred): The critic strongly recommends the series as it returns for a second season, praising its surreal absurdity, strong ensemble cast, and Berry's distinctive performance as the failing actor Steven Toast. The show improves with repeated viewing due to its running gags and cult appeal. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/toast-of-london-the-funniest-uk-sitcom-nobodys-watching/) ## Details - **Created by:** Matt Berry, Arthur Mathews - **Creator:** Matt Berry, Arthur Mathews - **Director:** Michael Cumming - **Writer:** Arthur Mathews, Matt Berry - **Producer:** Rachel Springett - **Cast:** Matt Berry as Steven Toast; Robert Bathurst as Ed Howzer-Black; Doon Mackichan as Jane Plough; Harry Peacock as Ray Purchase; Tim Downie as Danny Bear; Shazad Latif as Clem Fandango; Heida Reed as Pooky Hook; Cariad Lloyd as Lindy Makehouse - **Runtime:** 30m - **Release (the US):** 20 October 2013 - **Genres:** Comedy - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwDJMU6RbFk ## Where to watch in the US - BritBox: streaming, hd, leaving 2026-09-30 - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - Apple TV: add-on, hd - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd, leaving 2026-09-30 *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AU, CA, GB, IE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Garth Marenghi's Darkplace* (2004): Berry’s earlier stint in deliberately shoddy comedy, with a horror writer as the ego - *Father Ted* (1995): Mathews’s other sitcom about certain, wrong men in a room, with priests - *Withnail and I* (1987), Fi1m 88: Two out-of-work actors, one flat, a great deal of shouting, no happy ending — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/withnail-and-i.md) - *The Larry Sanders Show* (1992), Fi1m 91: American television vanity dissected slowly and cruelly, with a straighter face — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/the-larry-sanders-show.md) - *The Trip* (2010): Coogan and Brydon compete over restaurant tables; smaller egos, same wounded pride --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/toast-of-london