Ronnie Barker

But if you want to hear how the use of language can be the making of a series, the re-run of Porridge (BBC2) is the show to watch. Those scripts by Clement and le Frenais were gold in every molecule. 'Her flat fell through.' 'Fell through to the flat beneath, I expect.' When you recover from laughing at the way Ronnie Barker delivers it, you realise that a lot depends on how the writers wrote it: the word 'beneath', in particular, is perfectly chosen and placed. Years from now, when all those semi-documentary, semi-improvised, semi-truthful epics about working-class rebellion have dated hopelessly, the work of Galton and Simpson and Clement and le Frenais will still be there to testify that there really was such a thing as common speech with a rhythm of its own.

For an example of what the Beeb's production values can do to enhance mediocre material, there was, or were, The Two Ronnies (BBC1). Ronnie Barker has a very good news number, full of information to help make the Common Market more confusing. 'Here is a graph. Here is another graph. Here is the first graph upside-down.' But generally the show's level of verbal invention was somewhere between pun and innuendo, with words like 'commitments' being employed to mean 'balls.'

'Going Straight' is the worthy successor of 'Porridge.' Norman Fletcher, still played by Ronnie Barker, is out of the nick and cleaving to the straight and narrer. His dialogue, like everybody else's in the show, is still supplied by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. Every line they write is at least twice as good as anything in the average West End play.

And Going Straight always has the copper-bottomed commodiously curved Ronnie Barker, looking like Father Christmas who has come to nick the toys.

The Two Ronnies (BBC1) tried hard. Apart from the regular Piggy Malone number - which never works, but gives the boys a chance to grope a scantily clad damsel - the show was reasonably diverting, and for a wonder it was not until the last item that the stars appeared in female attire.

The special Yuletide edition of Porridge (BBC1) was probably the funniest thing on the air. There is no denying that Ronnie Barker is good in 'Porridge.' There is plenty of denying that he is good in many of those other things he does [...] but in Porridge Barker is delivering the lines of Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, and is obliged to raise his game.

Porridge is not particularly about prison, and if it were it might be distasteful or intolerable. It is about Barker, in shape and content an all-round bad egg, resisting to the last wriggle and wangel and back answer, the pressure of the system. So instinctively awkward that he lies about his height merely to deceive the doctor.

The original old man had a good deal of gusto and Steptoe about him, which has been lost in transit.

The story of this comedy playhouse was the emnity of Franklyn played by Geoffrey Bayldon (or Catweazle to your children) and Johnnie played by Ronnie Barker who, under the will of their only friend, inherit a house. It was very well done and with a definite taste of salt rather than sugar.

If I were the Head of Comedy, I would know a joke when I saw it and sign up the lucky stars for a series. It must be plain enough what can struggle on for a series. "Idle at Work" last night barely made it to the end.