Crackanory

Episode one
A nice idea, this, as Dave continues its understandably low-budget move into original programming. Split into two halves, ‘Crackanory’ offers fairytales for adults.

First, Jack Dee reads Nico Tatarowicz’s gloomy Twitter parable ‘Bitter Tweet’ in which a smug urbanite finds himself at the centre of a social media storm after casually insulting a Justin Bieber-style pop phenomenon. And then Sally Phillips narrates Toby Davis’s ‘What Pee Bee Did Next’, a more uplifting – if slightly macabre – affair in which an eccentric toymaker attempts to look after his family after his death.

Clearly, the quality will vary over the series but there’s something deeply, atavistically satisfying about being read to and something pleasingly minimal about these two tales and the very basic mode of their rendering. Worth a look.