The Wrong Mans review – audacious and ambitious, it got everything right

It’s not truly Christmas until you’ve seen James Corden gouge out Bertie Carvel’s glass eye with his fingers. Thank goodness, then, for the return of The Wrong Mans (BBC2), Matthew Baynton and Corden’s breakneck adventure comedy about two unassuming council workers/peril magnets with a tendency to end up in dire trouble, always by accident. During the first series, Sam (Baynton) and Phil (Corden) were embroiled in a Russian kidnap plot when Sam picked up a ringing mobile phone at the scene of a car accident. The last we saw of them, they were in a pink hatchback, pursued by MI5, with a bomb clamped to the chassis, about to meet their end. Spoilers follow.

Last night we rejoined them at their joint funeral – the funeral MI5 held to fool the Russians while they swiftly relocated to some unnamed dust bowl in Texas, got jobs in a haulage depot and re-christened themselves “Ian” and “Terry”. They got the character development so spot-on here. While Phil made the best of things and enjoyed inventing a new backstory for himself – heart and brain surgeon, retired pro-wrestler, former flame of Kate Winslet – Sam had become a twitchy, depressive alcoholic who suffered the intimidating sexual advances of Samantha Spiro’s truly horrible yard manager between embittered swigs from his hip flask.

When Phil heard his mum (Dawn French) was in hospital, hovering between life and death, the men resolved to get home to Bracknell, no matter what. They quickly found themselves under arrest by the DEA for unwittingly carrying a coke-filled guitar through customs and were banged up in a terrifying penitentiary with Carvel’s one-eyed white supremacist inmate. Before playing Babylon’s lizard-like arch manipulator, Finn, on Channel 4 this year, Carvel starred as a large, warty middle-aged woman in the stage show of Matilda. Talk about a chameleon. It’s a shame he didn’t appear to survive last night’s jailbreak – I wanted to see a lot more of him.

The audacity, not to mention big narrative balls, required to essentially repeat the plot device of the first series was considerable, but they more than got away with it. The tiny domino representing Sam and Phil’s initial decision to get home tipped gently into a slightly bigger domino involving a people-trafficking ring, which set in motion the equivalent of an OK Go video as one piece of narrative machinery crashed into the next, driving them on to tonight’s superb conclusion. I couldn’t help watching the second half too. I’m not ashamed to say I stood and clapped at the end, on my own in a quiet room.

The sheer scale and ambition take your breath away. Director Jim Field-Smith treats the whole enterprise as a Bourne film (Phil’s surname is a clear nod to Matt Damon’s action hero). I won’t spoil, but what Sam and Phil do to reach British soil again is nothing short of spectacular. Another emphatic ovation from me. You’ll see why.

However far-fetched the plot twists and turns – and they get bigger and bigger – the characters are absolutely believable and fully realised. I can’t think of another equally accomplished all-rounder with its incredible mix of action, pace, style, gags and emotional depth. So many fireworks, stunts, flourishes and big laughs – but none at the expense of the rock-solid foundations. My TV highlight of the year.

With Corden moving to the US to host The Late Late Show in March, I am uncharitably willing him to fail so he can hurry home and make a few more of these beauties. It can’t end here.

I’m less sad about the end of Derek (Channel 4), Ricky Gervais’s inexplicably clunky “thing” about a kind man who works in a nursing home. I can find no comedy in it and it lacks the emotional truth required for a drama. It concluded last night with a 65-minute special featuring a wedding, a baby, an anecdote about a bird with a broken wing and an alcoholic’s redemption, all laced with Gervais’s emotion-flavoured dialogue that sounds as if it should spring from real feelings but doesn’t.

Everyone looked embarrassed except Colin Hoult, one of the few good things in the last ever episode as Jeff, a self-contained side character, criminally underused. On the strength of his two or three lines, you could sense a whole life going on under the surface. It wasn’t in the lines but the performance, both understated and totally eye-grabbing. I’d like to see a show called Jeff, but written by someone with less of a tin ear for sentiment.