Bathing in jam; a fire in a paper orphanage; a hotel made entirely out of monkeys – the warped historical world of Bleak Expectations (Wed, Radio 4, 11.30am) is eminently well-suited to the radio.

The writer Mark Evans has worked with Mitchell and Webb, yet it’s hard to imagine his new show following the well-trodden industry path to TV. Television might have inflated Little Britain and That Mitchell and Webb Sound with costumes and effects, but Bleak Expectation’s literary references exploit the clever common-room atmosphere of radio comedy.

This is a Victorian epic that takes the more melodramatic moments of Charles Dickens and puts them in a comedy false-nose-and-glasses set populated by a riot of poor orphans and wicked guardians. It starts with the formidable Sir Phillip Bin (Richard Johnson), the author of A Story of Two Towns, The Old Shop of Stuff and Lustful Killer Bees From Mars, telling the story of his life to a journalist from The Times to stop the rumour mill from “grinding the flour of gossip which makes the bread of scandal and from that the sandwich of despair”.

Such well-read yet shamelessly silly touches – the surreal leap, the flowery metaphor – betray the origins of Bleak Expectations in the mind of Evans, a former Footlights president. Yet despite being old-fashioned, the kind of thing that could make David Mitchell look like Pete Doherty, this is irresistibly funny. With a cast that includes Celia Imrie as Bin’s mad mother and Anthony Head as the evil Mr Gently Benevolent, at times Bleak Expectations has the feel of a Morecambe and Wise sketch, with serious actors capering about at the edge of light-entertainment anarchy. Add a glass of gin and a meat pie for the listener, and all is happiness.

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