Armando Iannucci

Victor Lewis-Smith enjoys 2004: The Stupid Version

Until this programme, I'd always assumed that credit for the classic series The Day Today deserved to be shared 50-50 between Iannucci and Chris Morris. But the more I watched, the more obvious it became that Iannucci is a genuinely creative comedic force, whereas Morris was largely an imitator.

Cult corner

It's filmed in a blanched-out sequence of static, grainy shots that trap you into thinking you're about to get some grim kitchen-sink piece of social commentary. In fact, what you get is a joyously escalating series of warm and hilarious plots prompted by the inconsequential.

Like so much regular viewing on telly, Gash's main strength has to be its ubiquity. Already it's marked out as the programme I watch before the lights go off and I make my way up to bed. And for me, there it will stay, because despite the efforts of Armando Iannucci, my conversations are still far more likely to start: "So what about that I'm A Celebrity then, eh?"

While the script, direction and characterisation are all borderline holy in their perfection, it ignores the fact that, at this stage of his career, rather than let him languish on the "third best slot on Radio Norwich", the producers of The Entertainers would have dropped Sayer like a shot for a pop at Partridge.

Victor Lewis-Smith on I'm Alan Partridge

However, with Armando Iannucci producing, and Talkback overseeing this series, he's back on form, giving us [g=42]comedy that is rich, multi-layered and doesn't rely solely on embarrassment for its effect] (unlike that runt son of Spinal Tap, The Office, which despite almost unprecedented media hype ended its run with 56 million people not watching.

Viewed in an utterly contemporary context, the new series of I'm Alan Partridge looks curiously dated. Recording it on video and including an audience laughter track flies in the face of recent comedy tradition.

Victor Lewis-Smith on The Armando Iannucci Shows

His peripatetic philosophical musings were mostly of the narcissistic, self-doubting, "I don't want to be caught out saying the wrong thing" variety, and were interspersed with surreal (aka unfunny) sketches, a format that Alexei Sayle exhausted some years ago, and which Iannucci himself has already flogged to death on Radio 4.

Giblets and war were two basic ingredients of The Saturday Night Armistice, a show described at the outset by Armando Iannucci as "a sort of Pets Win Prizes during a cull". The man behind two of last year's most original series (The Day Today and Knowing Me, Knowing You) was making his debut as a presenter and, as so often happens when producers succumb to the temptation to get in front of the cameras, it was all going disastrously wrong.

Avoiding the obvious newsroom jokes, and packing every second full of acute observation and sharp parody, Morris, Armando Iannucci and the rest of the team have produced a brilliantly original show. Their radio origins reveal themselves continually in their distinguished use of sound, and their bravery in running without canned laughter has paid off: a show this good doesn't need it.