Matt Berry and Toast Of London are going Hollywood, and there’s only one appropriate response
TV Features Toast of London
Deadline reports that actor, writer, comedian, musician, and regular human bartender Matt Berry will reprise the role of high-winds actor, voiceover artist, bon vivant, noted proponent of Blue Spruce, and regular human failure Steven Toast for a new BBC series, tentatively called Toast Of Tinseltown. We take you now to The A.V. Club’s collective response to the news.
As implied by the working title, Berry’s latest collaboration with Arthur Matthews will transplant the mustachioed thespian from his familiar confines in old Blighty to Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States, where he’ll take his chances on becoming a movie star. Say, didn’t something similar work out for the stagehand briefly seen in the first series of Toast Of London?
Toast Of London, which ran for three series on the U.K.’s Channel 4, depicts Toast’s generally disastrous, occasionally musical grasps at fame and love, played to the blustery, BAFTA-winning hilt by What We Do In The Shadows star Berry. These grasps are aided by allies like his in-demand agent Jane Plough (Doon Mackichan) and roommate Ed Howzer-Black (Robert Bathurst), thwarted by nemeses like Ray “Ray Bloody Purchase” Purchase (Harry Peacock) and the boys down at Scramble Studios Soho (including Shazad Latif as Clem Fandango—who, yes, Toast can hear), and peppered with the type of deep-cut allusions to British theater, film, and television you can expect from a guy who made a whole covers album of U.K. TV theme songs and ident tunes. While Toast Of Tinseltown comes together, should American viewers catch up with Toast Of London on Netflix and IFC? Survey says…
71 Comments
I came here for this and I was rewarded.My favorite moment of the many awesome Clem Fandango parts is when Clem announces is name is now “Clem H Fandango”
Clem Fandango makes watching Star Trek Discovery impossible for me without laughing.
Clem H. Fandango:
The “H” stands for “Hollywood”.
Clem Fandango is one of the greatest “funny names” ever invented.
“You ARE a fucking STAR, aren’t you?”
Toast of London is addictiveWhy, after just one viewing you’ll want moreand more
and more
and more
and more
and more
and more
and more
I randomly started watching this on Netflix without knowing what it was. It’s good, but they absolutely do not slow down at all and it’s very jarring to watch at first
I was instantly hooked by the first episode where his date randomly throws a shopping cart into a canal.
I started watching it when he was cast in What We Do In The Shadows and the comments section round here gushed about it. So glad I did.
There will be a lot of opportunities reshooting scenes where Kevin Spacey was originally cast, especially since Spacey died in that drone attack.
Ridiculous nonsense. Spacey died in a blimp accident immediately after finishing recording his voice lines for A Bug’s Life.
Yes! Now do more Snuff Box too. Why not?
More Darkplace for me!!
I was going to say Boosh. Then I remembered how badly it’s aged. What were we THINKING
Both! Both!
Shit, throw in another series of Man to Man with Dean Learner while we’re at it!
Just finished this today! More would be fantastic.
Mathew Holness’ non career is so weird. Creates a cult comedy classic in Darkplace, then just disappears from comedy / public
He played the dead dad in flashback scenes in S1 of Channel 4’s “Back”, but was relegated to a photograph on the pub wall in S2.But Alice Lowe turns up in the S2 finale, framed as if to become a big part of any S3. So, there’s that, for fans of Darkplace.
He wrote & directed the fantastic horror film ‘Possum’ recently so he has definitely not disappeared.
More people need to watch that show, because I’m sick of the weird looks I get whenever people are talking about what kind of computer they have, and I say, “I use a Mac. They’re much better for making my squirrel movies.”
A animated series was on the way from some now defunct streamer. I want to say Seeso?
I love that song.
I had to order Snuff Box on DVD because it disappeared from streaming in the USA. Now if they would only release a region 1 DVD of Darkplace (or how bout a region free blu-ray with all the Man to Man with Dean Learner eps also?).Goddamn dwindling physical media. Snuff Box is on Hoopla, but that’s a library streaming service and I have Kanopy from my library so I have to assume they don’t do both. Darkplace and Man to Man aren’t streaming anywhere. And Australian show Danger 5 was in the same boat, it left Netflix and I found no region 1 DVDs available, although apparently it’s on Amazon Prime now (which I no longer have).
Just a heads up if you haven’t tried it yet, I’m able to access both Kanopy and Hoopla, so at least some libraries connet with both services.
I will check with my library!
Regon-free DVD player will cure what ails you!
I don’t pretend to understand the BBC’s international comings and goings, but Toast Of London was originally a Channel 4 show. Good to see The Beeb reaching out for great shit to make.
Forgive my intentional ignorance of British TV channels, but I thought channel 4 was part of the BBC?
No, Channel 4 was a privately-funded johnny-come-lately channel over here that was famed for late-night soft porn and also late-night spots devoted to lesbian activists. In other words, BBC viewers were outraged.
These days C4 likes to think it’s a bit hip and appeals to kids, students, millennial manchildren like me etc.
Good to know! They seem to be currently dumping a almost everything they have on Netflix over here. There’s some good stuff
Also, all kinds of effing and jeffing in their adverts.
If by soft porn you mean Channel 4’s ill fated “red triangle” experiment in its early days, I suspect readers will get entirely the wrong end of the stick as to the type of content that was shown. Suffice to say, a lot of teenage boys were very disappointed.
Channel 4 is an odd one. Although it is classed as a public-service broadcaster, and it’s publicly owned, it’s not part of the BBC, and its funding comes from adverts like any commercial channel, not from the TV Licence Fee.
The great irony about Channel 4 was that it was set up by Thatcher’s government to cater for minority interests. Of course minority interest for a Conservative government meant stuff like fly fishing or other dull middle-to-upper class pursuits.
Thankfully those damn lefties misunderstood the remit and gave us late night porn, The Tube, Brookside and er….Countdown.
There IS a BBC Four that shows mostly documentaries and culture shows, but I think it’s online only now
In America, we believe all UK television aired on the BBC.
BBC Radio Four is BBC, but Channel 4 is not.
My first thought was “how are they possibly going to explain the entire cast moving to L.A.?” but then they don’t really bother to explain anything
Somehow it will involve Jon Hamm
God that was such a great episode… on 2nd thought, not greater than any other episode because they’re all fucking great
RAY FUCKING PURCHASE!!
Well, well, well…
*camera zooms in shakily*
I had no idea the actor’s real name was Harry Peacock. That’s an infinitely better comedy rival name.
The weird thing about Harry Peacock is why isn’t he a bigger star? He’s like a funnier Brad Pitt.
Great news indeed.
No, that’s a different show made by Tina Fey
I’ve already watched it twice during the pandemic. More would be good.
The audio segments on youtube just aren’t the same.
This is utter joy, especially the rage is causes in some of the less informed commenters.https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/nov/25/toast-of-london-macbeth-michael-fassbender
That’s delightful. “Keith Chegwin (no idea)” is one for the ages.
Well, Well, Well.
I did try Toast of London on a few of my American friends, but sadly, it was just too weird for them to enjoy. Maybe after the success of What We Do In the Shadows, they will be ready to embrace the strangeness that is Matt Berry…
i chuckle every time i hear Matthew Berry doing V/O for commercials. and immediately think “yes, i can hear you clem fandango.”
Hahaha, yeah, he’s in an Advil commercial right now (unless it’s someone else who sounds just like him) and it’s so jarring. When I hear his voice I have an involuntary response to look up.
Huzzah for this, but get Year of the Rabbit done first please.
Can I just say how fucking happy I am that the Mighty Boosh is now on Hulu and I get to show it to my kids? Matt Berry is a delight.
Can Latif play Clem as a nu-klingon?
There has never been a show that does goofy names better than Toast of London. It’s also a great vehicle for the absurdist comedy of The Legend that is Matt Berry. This is awesome news!
I’m only really familiar with him on WWDITS, that Volvic commercial that was a popular YouTube Poop source for a while, and a weird dream I had where Matt Berry played Blathers in a Hollywood-produced Animal Crossing movie (which did not exist in reality, but I still feel like he’d be a good pick).
What should I check out first?
I think his run in The IT Crowd is really good in a more mainstream setting. His Peep Show parts were fantastic. He’s a ton of fun on Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace.
Snuff Box & Toast seem to be Barry’s most fully realized & personal expressions of his comedic vision
Are they on streaming in the States anywhere?
Toast of London is on NetflixSnuff Box was on HULU at some point, but IDK anymore i canceled it
Ok, fine. But when can I expect a return of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and/or Snuff Box.
Just do a whole show of Toast and Purchase doing porno voiceovers.FYI, NSFW.