Red Dwarf's 10 best supporting characters

Mark selects the top ten of Red Dwarf's episodic characters, with some help from Queeg, Mr Flibble and Duane Dibley...

David Jason goes behind the camera for the Pearly Gates

Sir David Jason is stepping behind the camera for his next project. Pearly Gates, which stars The Fast Show's Mark Williams and is written by Ben Sweet, centers around a family-owned funeral business.

A welcome repeat for this charming series starring Sanjeev Bhaskar, which was a big hit with our readers (who described it as 'an antidote to the winter blues'). Bhaskar plays high-flying Delhi graduate Dr Prem Sharma, who arrives in the UK in 1963 in the first wave of Indian doctors wooed by then health minister Enoch Powell. The doctor's glamorous wife isn't too happy with the sleepy Welsh mining village where they are to live. And the locals have their own issues, including the Coal Board's snooty local manager (Mark Williams), who has a few skeletons in his cupboard. It's a lovely slice of nostalgia, served with a big dollop of social comment. More tomorrow at 3.30pm.

Fans of gentle 1960s-set village comedy dramas must have been gutted when Heartbeat was cancelled recently. But lucky them, it's back, in daytime form, under the name The Indian Doctor. True, it's about a GP, not a policeman, arriving in a small Welsh town where classic pop songs soundtrack every plot development. And there's a racial twist, as the hero is Sanjeev Bhaskar's Dr Prem Sharma, fresh from Delhi with his glamorous wife Kamini, part of the influx of Indian doctors recruited by health minister Enoch Powell to staff the NHS.

The locals are completely ignorant about Indians - they're even shown a special information film to brief them on their new neighbour, followed by a screening of The Millionairess, the dodgy film in which Peter Sellers pretends to be Indian and sings Goodness Gracious Me, a nod to the title of Bhaskar's breakthrough sketch show.

But while this might sound on paper like the basis for a gritty drama about racism and immigration, it's been made as a cheerful afternoon wallow in the lighter side of culture clash. Pretty much everyone is well-meaning, apart from designated villain Mark Williams, playing the moustache-twirling Coal Board boss and his snobby wife. They invite the Sharmas to a dinner party, complete with tasteless Vesta Curry from a box to make them feel at home, thinking that they're doing the poor rubes a big favour - only to find that Mrs S is from an aristocratic Indian family, more used to mixing with the Mountbattens.

Meanwhile, the rest of the town are friendly and the one family who are a little unsure about having an Indian doctor are quickly won over when he comes through in an emergency, so that's all right then. Still, perhaps that's fair enough - not every immigrant to Britain suffered racism, particularly in 1963 when the country was crying out for them, and it would be a shame if every fictional account was full of unpleasantness, as if - in the long run - people didn't manage mostly to settle in perfectly well. And this isn't heavyweight drama, just a watchable and mildly amusing enough nostalgic little series.

BBC1, you're spoiling us. Following two weeks of daytime drama in Moving On, they're giving us this charming weekday comedy drama. It stars Sanjeev Bhaskar as a high-flying Delhi graduate who arrives in the UK in 1963 as part of the first wave of Indian doctors wooed by then health minister Enoch Powell. Arriving in a sleepy Welsh mining village, his glamorous wife's not too happy with the situation. And neither are the locals, including the Coal Board's slightly snooty local manager (Mark Williams), who obviously has a few skeletons in his cupboard. It's a lovely slice of nostalgia, albeit served with a big dollop of social comment.

Inspired by Dylan Thomas's nostalgic anecdotal tale, Mark Watson's observant comedy is set in the household of young Owen Rhys (Oliver Bunyan/Mark Williams) over a series of Christmases in 1980s South Wales. Every year, the peace of the family home, where Owen lives with his gloomy father (Mark Lewis Jones) and obsessive mother (Ruth Jones), is disturbed by the yuletide arrival of Owen's two uncles (Steve Speirs and Paul Kaye) and nephew (Jamie Burch/Rhys McLellan). In a glimpse of three of these gatherings, while Owen and Maurice are seen maturing into young men, their male elders merely engage in ever-more puerile bouts of sibling rivalry.

Nick Hornby is arguably an accomplished writer, but as his new book hits the shelves and his screenplay for An Education reaches the silver screen, this comedy series co-written with journalist Giles Smith shows signs that he is spreading himself too thinly. The tale of an idiotic, ageing rock drummer who has inadvertently become the richest man in Britain, it relies too heavily on one-note gags about his wealth, while ignoring any potential to explore deeper themes. The talents of Mark Williams, Russell Tovey and Lynda Bellingham are wasted as the rock star, his personal manager, and his dotty mother. Shame.