Television series
Toast of London
Toast of London is British sitcom at its most gloriously unhinged — Matt Berry booming his way through voiceover gigs, radio feuds and disastrous romances with the operatic self-regard he'd bring to Macbeth. It's less plot than pure mood: theatrical, absurdist, endlessly quotable. Watch it for Berry's voice alone, and for a cast committed to total, straight-faced lunacy.
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Garth Marenghi's Darkplace2004
Matt Berry again, this time as a hack horror novelist turned TV star, in a show that spoofs bad '80s television with the same deadpan absurdist commitment as Toast. Essential companion viewing if you love his delivery.
But Only six episodes exist, and the parody-of-bad-TV format is a specific, deliberately ugly joke that not everyone finds funny.
The Mighty Boosh2004
Fielding and Barratt's surreal double act built a whole cosmology of monsters, jazz freaks and shamanic disco balls out of pure nonsense logic, the same gleeful commitment to absurdity that powers Toast's world.
But It's stranger and more musical than Toast, with long fantastical detours some find indulgent rather than hilarious.
I'm Alan Partridge1997
Steve Coogan's washed-up broadcaster, marooned in a Travel Tavern, is the other great portrait of a British entertainer whose self-image wildly outpaces his actual talent — cringe comedy at its most exquisite.
But It's cringe rather than surreal — grounded, sad, and occasionally hard to watch rather than gleefully unreal.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
BoJack Horseman2014
Both centre on a self-obsessed, mediocre actor whose vanity and delusion drive every disaster, but BoJack takes the same joke and lets it actually hurt — identical engine, opposite register.
An animated Hollywood satire about a washed-up sitcom actor drowning in vanity, addiction and self-loathing — the same vain, deluded showbiz animal as Toast, but the laughs curdle into real grief.
But It gets genuinely devastating about addiction, depression and cruelty — nothing you'd expect from Toast's cheerful chaos.
More like this (7)
Flight of the Conchords2007
Two hopeless musicians failing upward in New York, told with the same deadpan delivery and low-stakes disasters, plus songs funnier than most sitcoms' entire scripts.
But Gentler and sweeter than Toast's chaos, with melancholy folk-pop charm instead of manic cruelty and shouting.
Peep Show2003
Mitchell and Webb's claustrophobic POV sitcom shares Toast's love of a hapless man ruining his own life through vanity, cowardice and terrible decisions, just filmed from inside his skull.
But The first-person camera style is an acquired taste, and the comedy is bleaker, meaner, and less theatrical.
The IT Crowd2006no page yet
Graham Linehan's workplace sitcom has the same appetite for big, silly set pieces and quotable one-liners, with a cast just as willing to go fully unhinged for a joke.
But It's a conventional multi-camera sitcom underneath the surreal bits — tidier and less relentlessly odd than Toast.
Snuff Box2006no page yet
Matt Berry and Rich Fulcher's cult sketch show, made before Toast, is even weirder and darker — hangmen, magic, musical interludes — the raw prototype for Berry's later surrealism.
But It's a sketch show, not a sitcom, so there's no ongoing story, and the tone is more macabre than warm.
Man Down2013no page yet
Greg Davies plays a hopeless man-child schoolteacher whose life is one long escalating disaster, with the same taste for cringing, over-the-top humiliation as Toast's misadventures.
But It leans on broad physical comedy and slapstick rather than Toast's surreal, theatrical flights of fancy.
Waiting for Guffman1997
Same target — talentless people utterly convinced of their own stardom — but filmed as dry, straight-faced documentary instead of theatrical farce, proving the joke works in a completely different key.
Christopher Guest's mockumentary about a small-town theatre troupe staging a hopeless amateur musical is showbiz delusion at its funniest and gentlest, full of the same oblivious self-belief that keeps Steven Toast afloat.
But It's quieter and more improvised than Toast, American in flavour, with comedy built on understatement rather than shouting.
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin1976no page yet
Toast's whole mode — an ordinary grievance escalating into full theatrical fantasy — has a direct ancestor here, a show that proved decades earlier British sitcom could turn a man's ego into pure surrealism.
A 1970s British sitcom about a bored, middle-aged man who starts staging elaborate fantasies and escapes from his own mundane life — the ancestor of Toast's surreal, self-inflating absurdism, decades before Matt Berry existed.
But It's slower and more melancholic, rooted in '70s office satire — the surrealism creeps in gradually rather than arriving fully formed.
People
Cast
Recommended by
The League of Gentlemen, Peep Show, Extras, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, The Mighty Boosh, Look Around You, This Country, Absolutely Fabulous, I'm Alan Partridge