Amanda Holden stars as a ringmaster in this Daniel Peak-scripted, circus-based sitcom whose impressive cast also includes John Thomson, Tony Robinson and Ruth "Hi-De-Hi!" Madoc. There are so few primetime sitcoms nowadays that the experience of watching one feels surreally olde worlde - the easily tickled audience who giggle like loons even at the straight lines, foreign accents regarded as inherently amusing and jokes about a ferret down a clown's trousers "having a ball". It's almost in Mitchell and Webb's Send for Hennimore territory - like a precise pastiche of bad British comedy.

Reports of the death of the British sitcom have been greatly exaggerated. With Last of the Summer Wine making its 31st series, My Family its 11th and even Reggie Perrin recommissioned, somebody's watching. And they're the same viewers likely to warm to this new family-friendly sitcom set in a two-bit provincial circus.

It stars Amanda Holden as ringmaster Lizzie, who struggles to control a gaggle of fading acts, including a wacky ageing performer (Hi-De-Hi!'s Ruth Madoc) and a pair of hopeless clowns (John Thomson and Sophie Thompson). The script by relative newcomer Daniel Peak features dog-napping plots and ferrets-down-trousers gags rather than the observational humour that's so hip these days, but it draws upon the rich tradition of earlier comedies - from Dad's Army to Steptoe and Son - in which the humour often came from characters who are compelled by their situation to do peculiar, funny things. Spirited performances by a decent cast go some way toward making up for the dated set-up. Baldrick himself, Blackadder's Tony Robinson, turns up as the circus's wisecracking accounts man, and Holden propels the action (she was, after all, a perky comic actress in Kiss Me Kate and The Grimleys before Britain's Got Talent and Botox took over). Launching any new sitcom is a bit of a highwire act, but audiences may roll up to this one.

The first sitcom that's less funny than its situation?

We've had shops, police stations, hospitals, newsrooms, prisons and offices - what about a circus sitcom? On BBC1. Starring Amanda Holden. What could possibly go wrong?

Why Amanda Holden hates clowns

Big Top serves up predictable jokes but is saved by a great cast, mainly of people called Thompson.

Amanda Holden on her new comedy series Big Top

As she begins a new role away from Britain's Got Talent we talk to Amanda Holden about her new sitcom, Simon Cowell - and how her tiny daughter is behaving like a mini-celebrity.

This new series from the Comedy Connections people has a rather misleading title.

Despite the efforts of presenter Clive Anderson and three other scriptwriters to find the funny side of different TV formats this is a fairly straight run-through.

It would certainly benefit from less of Clive's awkward links and more of what we really want to see, the clips which cover all the bases from an ancient show called Top Town right through to today's The X Factor, Britain's Got Talent and John Sergeant doing his Stiffly Come Dancing thing.

Among the gems tonight is ex-Corrie actress Debra Stephenson doing impressions of judges Amanda Holden, Cheryl Cole and Dannii Minogue.

And Les Dennis reveals that the clapometer on Opportunity Knocks was operated by a couple of prop men pushing a lever to pretty much wherever they liked. A generation is collectively gutted.

The bbc seems to love its family based sitcoms. But for every My Family, which regularly pulls in the viewers, there is a Mad About Alice, the laugh-free show with Amanda Holden and Jamie Theakston that was put out of its misery after just one series.

This new offering, with Caroline Quentin and Neil Dudgeon, sits somewhere in between. There are some witty moments but these are drowned out by more regular unfunny happenings, so unimaginative and staid it's embarrassing.

Actors of Quentin and Dudgeon's calibre deserve much better scripts. They play Maddy and Jim, divorced parents who have recently married and are adapting to life as one giant family.