Rob Grant

Few sitcoms sustain their initial wit and sharpness beyond two or three series, but sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf - back on BBC2 for its sixth run - defies the ravages of time with the same non-chalance displayed last night by its chief slob-in-space Lister (Craig Charles).

Now The 10%ers (Carlton), written and produced by the Red Dwarf team of Grant and Naylor for Comedy Playhouse, really intends to be funny and it really is. A whirling farce, turning faster and faster on the beautifully smooth spindle of Clive Francis, it could easily spin off into a series. The only clumsy thing about it seems to be the title.

Red Dwarf (BBC2), now in its fourth orbit, told the touching love story of Kryton, a mechanoid who looks like a giant, half-chewed, rubber-tipped pencil and Camille, a green blob who looks like something that's dropped out of the Sphinx's nose. As this is how their colleagues describe them, you can see that what the crew lack in charm they make up in candour.

Immediately following this was the comforting Red Dwarf (BBC2), a space fantasy in which the spaceship's computer is not only visibly human but in a steady state of gloom, terror and self-doubt: "I can't do it. I can't cope. Me bottle's gone. I fort I could navigate at the light speed but I just can't wrap me 'ead around it. Gordon Bennett, that was a close one."

Given the present sad state of scripted comedy on radio, Cliché, a new series from Manchester, (Radio 4, Mondays and Tuesdays) has started well. Owing something to Week Ending and something to television's Not The Nine O'Clock News, these sketches take brisk pot-shots at some not entirely new, if thoroughly deserving, targets.