Building a weird world; This quirky one-off drama focuses on two oddball architects and their dastardly plans for a magnificent Edinburgh church NEW TOWN SATURDAY, BBC4, 9pm.

Decent, watchable dramas come and go, but now and again something comes up that's so brilliantly different, quirky, entertaining and original, it leaves you hungry for more.

Such is New Town, a one-off drama set in Edinburgh, written and directed by Annie Griffin (the talent behind hit sit-com The Book Group) and starringMark Gatiss from The League of Gentlemen and Finnish actor Mark Bremer, an unknown here until now.

They play Purves and Pekkala, a pair of creepily eccentric architects and life partners who, like trendy artists Gilbert and George, do everything together and look like two peas in a pod.

With their shaven heads, owlish specs, identical grey suits, tieless round-necked white shirts, red breastpocket handkerchiefs and sudden bursts of explosive anger, they dominate the screen whenever they appear, moving like eerie automata, or not moving at all. They even have a miniature clone in the shape of young son Atte.

Omid Djalili meanwhile swaps his usual shaven head for long, lustrous locks as rapacious property developer Walter Bannerman, who calls in the duo to pursue his sacrilegious idea of gutting a magnificent Georgian church in the up-market New Town area of Edinburgh and turning it into a temple of Mammon, an exclusive retail development.

The project inspires P&P and promises to liberate them from the tedium of kitchen extensions and bathroom conversions, but Archie Linklater (John Bett), head of Scottish Heritage stands firmly in the way of their gruesome plans.

Daniela Nardini, right, also stars as Meredith McIlvanney, a successful if slightly unhinged purveyor of high-end properties to the privileged few, as well as being Archie Linklater's lover.

Then there's upwardly mobile housewife from hell Shona Glennie (Gabriel Quigley), who's determined to move her family from their respectable Victorian semi to a covetable Georgian flat, whether husband Hamish (Paul Higgins) can afford it or not.

And the drama's human version of SunnyDelight, naive but saintly art student Rhian (Rose Leslie), from Vatersay - the island just south of Barra, as she explains to all and sundry.

This exotic mix bubbles away amusingly until a murder turns the whole enterprise significantly darker.

A BBC Scotland spokesperson said no decision on whether the one-off would become a series would be taken until the programme had aired - "but if the audience loves it, then you never know."

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DOUBLE TAKE... Architects Purves and Pekkala and son Atte