Clive James

After two dull episodes, Monty Python (BBC2) was suddenly funny again, thereby ameliorating the viewing week no end. The pressure on the now Cleeseless team to be as good as ever has perhaps been a little fierce, but that's showbiz.

A rock solid script, by Clement and La Frenais. Good comic writing depends on a regular supply of real-life speech patterns - the main reason why success tends to interfere with talent, since it separates the writer from his sources.

Les Dawson starred in Holiday With Strings (Yorkshire), a Galton and Simpson fantasy made suddenly topical by the Court Line floppola. Les was off on a dreadful package holiday, flying with an airline so broke they were raffling the meals. The script was fairly average, but Dawson is easy on the eye: a roly-poly panic merchant who looks as if his whole life is booked with Clarkson's.

With muted cries of rapture let me recommend Sprout (LWT). The situation is Likely Lads minus the fanatical accuracy of ear and observation, but the main character, a bird-fancying no-hoper, is just the job for John Alderton]. After leaving Please Sir, Alderton wasted his gift on a lumbering series called My Wife Next Door, which won prizes only because the prizes concerned were handed out by nitwits. This time he is called upon to invent, and his powers of invention are considerable. At a time when the screen is crawling with unfunny young comedians, John Alderton is a man to value.

Cooper's breathless speed with a story has by now, after years of practice, reached the limit of the intelligible. [...] Cooper does the opposite of milking a gag. He puts milk back in.

Max Bygraves (Max, ATV) told a dumb-Irishman joke and slipped in a noisome innuendo about an erection - one of his, as far as I could gather. Why is he allowed to do that?

And the second mystery was: how does a sketch as old as the one about the innumerate accountant get passed for performance even on the drear Frost's Weekly (BBC1)? That number has got a beard on it like a Chinese warlord. Has somebody pinched it and flogged it, or has the guy who originally wrote it succeeded in flogging it twice?

Clearly trying to do another Dad's Army, Jimmy Perry and David Croft have come up with something called It Ain't Half Hot, Mum. [...] The whole thing is calculated to yield mirth in plenty. Unfortunately the air of calculation is precisely what comes over strongest. Windsor Davies, however, playing a neurotic sar'-major with imperialistic convictions, was very funny straight away. Judgment reserved.

Baxter's programme consisted exclusively of movie and TV parodies, and once again his formidable powers of lampoon were aimed mainly at women. As with Benny Hill and Dick Emery, it is almost impossible to keep Baxter out of high heels: he hurdles into drag at the snap of a compact. Unlike them, however, he tries to be specific, and the first encouraging thing about this latest show was the new accuracy with which he zeroed on the target and started throwing in the heavy iron.

Dick Emery (BBC1) is drag to the roots: when he's in trousers, he's resting. I like the way dainty observation erupts into flagrant femme gestures - he flutters an eyebrow, flutes a voice, minces a walk and then suddenly bashes a door open with his hip - but the sketches are just vehicles.