Nancy Banks-Smith

Root Into Europe was a long-ish 50 minutes retrieved by a bravura performance from Claude Terrail who, apparently, runs the Tour D'Argent, and, if people ever stop eating crushed duck, could make a first-rate Cointreau commercial.

In Benny Hill: Clown Imperial (BBC2) he did a striptease in which he peeled off the solid flesh and showed a skeleton. Peeled off his face and showed a skull. Then detached his bones one by one. Alas, poor Yorick.

Bye-bye to The Big One (Channel 4), the McShane and Toksvig comedy which definitely grew on you. There are not many romantic comedies - offhand I can't think of any - which end with a fat American dressed as a chicken, a shop window dummy who seems, on the face of it, British and a Danish dwarf sitting companionably together on a sofa. And the words "So now what?"

Most people may live lives of quiet desperation but not Carla Lane. Desperate, yes. Quiet, no. Her comedies are often just this side of screaming. Hence, no doubt, Screaming (BBC1). There is, however, a blessed bounce about it like someone playing squash in your sitting-room. And it has Gwen Taylor.

In The Nicholas Craig Masterclass (BBC2) the master instructed students [on] how to make a really ballsy appearance on Question Time. Particular attention was paid to use of the eyebrows, and judicious use of the phrase "in this country". A useful tip is that no one is absolutely sure what a billion is. "All we need to know is that it is more than a million and it begins with an explosive bilabial consonant." So give it plenty of welly.

In spite of the ghost, it is a lively comedy by Paul A Mendelson (There is another Paul Mendelson?) with the excellent George Costigan and Miriam Karlin, who reminds me of a Jewish version of De mortuis nil nisi bonum, "Dead don't make you better".

According to Frank Muir, sitting on a studio cloud, all good television programmes when they die go to TV Heaven (Channel 4) where they are available to the heavenly host on, I suppose, Sky. This is whimsy. They go to Sweden, which is where the only copy of At Last The 1948 Show surfaced like a mammoth in the permafrost.

I am rather partial to Canned Carrott (BBC1), a sort of middle-market Dave Allen.

An Actor's Life For Me (BBC1), a perfectly good little show with a fine comic actor John Gordon Sinclair, was absolutely infested, pock marked and maggoty with studio laughter.

Meanwhile, in the new series of Making Out (BBC1), a mad chicken burns down New Lyne Electronics during a fancy dress party, ruthlessly roasting a Ninja turtle, which couldn't escape because of its shell. This gives you some feel of the thing, like Coronation Street on speed. Ferocious, fast, raunchy, rackety and will someone turn down that music. There are people here trying to sleep.