Ben Elton

Thankfully, they more or less pulled it off; but it's doubtful whether it could - and should - happen again. For Curtis and Elton seem almost too preoccupied, or lazy, or indifferent, to sustain any kind of rekindled comic genius for a whole new series of Blackadder anymore - you sense that half an hour is more or less the limit.

This was life-threateningly shallow stuff (well, you can drown in a puddle, you know), and it would be easy to say that Elton has simply lost it. Very, very easy, but it wouldn't be true, because I'm not convinced that he ever had it.

The long arm of TV law grew even longer last night with the first episode of a new sitcom, The Thin Blue Line (BBC1), although sit-trag might be more appropriate for a programme that hit the screen not with a bang but with a whimper. Written by Ben Elton (the man who took the b out of banal), hgere was a perfect opportunity for a coruscating satire on Her Majesty's Filth, yet it soon became obvious that the Gasforth constabulary were policing an area set not in England, but deep inside Terry and June land.

The morning after Ben Elton's The Man From Auntie was funnier than the night before, which indeed was not difficult.

Blackadder (BBC1) is back, this time in the Regency period as gentleman's gentleman to the first gentleman of Europe. Rather extravagant laughter from an audience of close friends, kookaburras and people whose vests tickle.