Clive James

With Abigail's Party, Leigh's unique talent was firmly hinted at, but not, I thought, fully confirmed. He obviously had a terrific eye and ear for human banality, but you wanted to be sure that the observations would shape up: art, after all, is more than just registration.

Always the best thing of its kind on the air, Minder (Thames) has been particularly nutritious lately, with George Cole's portrayal of Arthur Daley attaining such depths of seediness that a flock of starlings could feed off him.

OTT (Central) continues to be miraculous for the way it maintains its shape even when melting. The same could be said for a brick of cheap ice-cream, but OTT is more nourishing - a real television breakthrough.

Les Dawson (BBC1) is such an engaging fellow that you might wish he could be more adventurous, but his audience probably likes him for sticking to what he knows, which is mainly a verbally evoked Orc-sized mother-in-law and a wife who has to be transported in a cage.

But for what a written script can give rise to you have to watch Julie Walters doing her 'Dotty's Slot' number in Wood and Walters (Granada). Oscar Wilde would have swooned with envy. Every line is an epigram that comes shining through Dotty's cloud of talcum like a shaft of moonlight.

Victoria was a guest critic on the latest instalment of the continuously interesting, and indeed by now compulsory, Did You See? (BBC2), hosted this time by Mavis Nicholson because Ludovic Kennedy was off with flu. Ludo fronts the show to perfection, but Mavis took over without a hitch, thereby indicating the robustness of the format. One of the programmes up for discussion was O.T.T. (Central), which Victoria was generous enough to rate as highly original, even though it counts as a competitor. When it was put to Victoria that O.T.T. lacked edge, she asked why edge should be thought of as something a comedy show needed to have. At least one viewer gave a small yell of agreement at this point.

Already a booming success, Wood and Walters (Granada) should be there for ever. The basic strength of the show is the avalanche of high-quality material provided by Victoria Wood, but on top of that there is the bonus that she is an engaging performer in her own right, and on top of that there is the further bonus conferred by the participation of Julie Walters, who can give even a dud line an interesting reading and who lavishes on a good line the sort of inventive attention that makes writers think there must be other compensations in the television business besides money.

A grown-up spin-off from 'Tiswas', O.T.T. (Central) is the most original show on the air at the moment. In 'Tiswas' children stuck their heads through holes in the back of the set and thus helped fill the screen with life. Of necessity that can't happen in 'O.T.T.', but there is still a lot going on, and the penalty for getting the question wrong remains the same - your chair tilts forward and down you go into the suds. Fronting the show as well as producing it, Chris Tarrant is a lesson in relaxation to everybody else on television. His quick mind enables him to look exavtly as if he is making it all up.

The latest episode of To the Manor Born (BBC1) was billed as the last instalment of the series, but will no doubt be merely the prelude to another, since the two leading characters are now married. Now at last she will be able to do something about his clothes. One imagines that those slanting pockets on his tweed jackets are meant to indicate an arriviste, but surely he arrived long enough ago to have noticed by now what everyone else is wearing.

Most male comedians aren't funny, so why should female comedians be any funnier? 'Revolting Women' set off as if to prove this point. The songs and sketches, all composed and performed by females plus a token male, were fully as lousy as in some regional opt-out revue in which the songs and sketches are all composed and performed by males with a token female.