At last, some­thing to fill the gaping void in the comedy sched­ules left by Little Britain: I Am Not An Animal. Writ­ten and directed by Peter Bayn­ham (who has has a hand in almost every­thing funny on the tele­vi­sion since 1995) and voiced by Simon Pegg, Julia Davis and Steve Coogan, it tells the story of a troupe of talk­ing animals.

Bio-​engineered in a sin­is­ter vivi­sec­tion lab, the poor loves are doomed to live a life of loft-​apartment luxury, with Heat mag­a­zine as their cul­tural barom­e­ter and an end­less supply of Chi­anti fuelling dreams of vis­it­ing London. By the close of the open­ing episode, the gang have been freed by bungling animal rights vig­i­lantes, left to find their way in the world.

As you might expect from a long-​standing Chris Morris col­lab­o­ra­tor, the humour veers between sledge­ham­mer bum-​gags - two ‘My poo smells of sugar puffs’ scenes in one episode - and tickly little feather-​duster sub­tleties, as in the tit­u­lar nod to The Ele­phant Man.

The char­ac­ters are won­der­ful, too. There’s Philip, a pompous intel­lec­tual horse, with end­less gad­gets allow­ing him to live the humanoid life. And Mark - my fave - the closet case spar­row with designs on the pop charts and an obses­sion with shoe trees. And a slutty self-​styled femme fatale bull­dog bitch, Winona, who has a crush on ‘the actor Tim Robbins.’

God, it’s just fab­u­lous. View a short clip, right here.