Nancy Banks-Smith

The picture seemed to fuzz and flare. This sort of thing brings sensitive critics out in spots. It is either artistic effect or your tube's gone or you're going. [...] Cardiac Arrest itself, written by a doctor John MacUre, is propelled along by medical jokes like timed explosions. That they are largely at the expense of the patients may make some of us at the sharp end of the syringe a bit twitchy.

When Richard Wilson is the flavour of the month, the flavour is lemon. Under The Hammer seems to be a slightly sweet, slow burning romance between Wilson, an art expert, and Jan Francis, Head of Old Masters. I will try to believe it.

Alexei Sayle looks like Mr Blobby before the lobotomy. There is dangerous sharpness there like a razor in a cake of soap. The All-New Alexei Sayle Show (BBC2) is much more fun than the nine o'clock news on BBC1. Well, what isn't?

The Bullion Boys was a lollipop for finishing the Screen One series nicely. There is, it seems to me, something specific about Liverpool humour. It is the place where the Irish, Welsh and Scots, trying to get in, meet the English trying to get out and kick up a fine, creative froth. David Jason, playing the dockers' leader, was not like this at all. It was a sombre, strong performance like the stout below. Brenda Blethyn gave a ticklingly funny performance as a letter censor, rather like an exceptionally clever hen.

The Brighton Belles (Carlton) was taken off last night half-way through the series. Officially, it's just hibernating, you know, for the winter. I have found it almost impossible to watch. A peculiar embarrassment wold sweep over me as the cast traded insults at the top of their voices. The American script and the British cast came apart. The glue never took. Carefully inserted British refrences fell off, clonk. It was a complete transplant rejection.

A Foreign Field is something seen in a rear-view mirror, so why does it feel as if it lasted two hours when it only ran for 90 minutes? It seemed a slight vessel over-burdened with the freight of famous faces.

Dancing Queen (Granada) was the last in the excellent Rik Mayall Presents series. A slow romance set in Scarborough and filmed with such dazzling beauty by David Odd that you wanted to catch the first train to this place of marmalade skies. Like Mayall, poured onto the train with the stripper after a stag night. A tender performance by Mayall and a stunning one from Scarborough.

Briefest Encounter was a two-hander, if you don't count the dog, and it was a considerable achievement on the part of Mayall and Amanda Donohoe to keep it fizzing for 50 minutes. Television expands or contracts to fill the slot available, and, in this case, less might have been more. But I'm not complaining. Do you hear me complain? There are three comedies in this series and two have been crackers. if there is no bang in the third, it will still have been excellent value.

The purpose of Comedy Playhouse is to fly a few comic kites. If the stars have nothing better to do, Brighton Belles would make a series but I would be sorry to think they had nothing better to do. It seems a pointless exercise to copy an original.

Carla Lane's new series, Luv (BBC1) has a family resemblance to her old series, Bread. But at least it's a different script. Unlike the Boswells, a cheerful burden on the welfare state, Harold Craven (Michael Angelis) is a self-made man. His plastic plant pots seem to be doing amazingly well in the recession.