Nancy Banks-Smith

This pain-wracked (I hope) pair write "Dad's Army" (BBC1) and "It Ain't Half Hot, Mum" (BBC1) which is about the misadventures of an army concert party in India is, I think, funnier. I particularly recommend the performance of Windsor Davies as the Sergeant Major.

The Liver Birds has outlasted a whole giggle of girls-together comedy series. I can't quite think why. Well, they keep putting it back on, of course, but apart from that. It is much like watching a couple of budgies, all cheek and chirp and bounce. And in Polly James it has a woebegone clown child of real promise. A Mersey budgie.

You are perfectly entitled to your own favourite sketch. Feel free. It was a rich pudding for the show with a plum in there for everybody. Stanley Baxter deserves some kind of award for industry. Knowing, possibly, that he was by no means the biggest name in television, he tried harder. Never has a man done so many for so long.

It was much of a mixture-as-before with lots of little jokes, some littler than others and sketches and posh padding from good singers and fancy photography.

I suppose it is quite nice actually to be able to see Frank sit on a mousetrap or dangle over a cliff. The studio audience, each of them with tin tonsils clashing together like cymbals, thought it priceless. I do quite like to see the glimmer of a shade of a hint of a near-idea surface slowly on Michael Crawford's face and, with a gulp, sink back exhausted.

By not bothering to get up on Monday and Friday, one could avoid Opportunity Knocks and Miss World. No small bonus. Bonuses? Yes, well. This theory of the good life is rather thrown out of true by Last of the Summer Wine (BBC1), a new, mellow and gorgeous comedy series.

Tommy Cooper, also for Thames, offered a potted version of World War Two by appearing in a uniform which was half British, half German and adding moustaches, monocles and accents as the spirit moved him. [...] He reminds me of a shaggy dog who has somehow got involved in telling its own story.

Now as Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall and Walter Mitty and I know very well, this sort of thing is a quick visit to the asylum of the mind. And you can take the word any way you want. It has nothing whatsoever to do with French farcical episodes like last night's Billy Liar, with his four fiancees and two engagement parties and bobing in and out of assorted doors.

Then we were delighted with clips from about 600 old Carry On films, which have already delighted us enough on television under such titles as The Best of British Bioscope, The Rest of British Bioscope, and Suddenly It's Bob Monkhouse. Then there were some clips from new Carry On films, if new is the word.

At first I thought that a great blow for originality had been struck and the studio audience omitted. But they were there all right. It was just that they took a while to warm up and when they did they were appreciative. They liked the visual jokes best and so did I.