Lee Nelson's Well Good Show review

Overall, Lee Nelson's Well Good Show isn't that great, but enough of the show relies on Simon Brodkin's skills as a live performer to pull it through the comedy quicksand. The sketches and games aren't offensively bad, they're just relatively weak and employ obvious material.

Already commissioned for a series (unfortunately) is Lee Nelson's Well Good Show, a new comedy which is, well, bad. It's written and performed by stand-up Simon Brodkin, whose character Nelson is a cross between Marvin from BBC Scotland's The Scheme and 1980's Loadsamoney.

Lee says his catchphrase - "Qualiteeee!" - a lot, and makes the forbearing audience join in some stupid antics. For instance, a young man is ordered to choose from an array of girls with their backs to him. One is revealed to be a man with long hair, another - oh the horror! - is old, etc.

The show seems convinced that old people are intrinsically funny, it also features a lady taking her teeth out and gurning, and the regular big finale is his "nan" singing karaoke.

It's meant to be ironic, of course, but that's a feeble excuse for such an unoriginal and hopelessly unamusing embarrassment.

Lee Nelson's Well Good Show was actually well good, ish

Stand-up comedian Simon Brodkin has brought mouthy chav Lee Nelson to BBC3 and his gormless charm is hard to repel.

Al Murray's Multiple Personality Disorder is another sketch show to add to the pile; this one less interested in being knowingly hip or an intentional cult, and more a throwback to the mainstream Harry Enfield days of the early-'90s.

Al Murray thankfully rests his increasingly tiresome Pub Landlord persona, and instead gives us a confection of colourful characters. Hit-and-miss is always the phrase applies to sketch comedy, and so it comes to be used here. Murray is an amusing fellow, and there's good support from comedians Simon Brodkin and Jenny Eclair - but only a few sketches stuck in my mind: a married couple who converse in radio advert lingo, dastardly gentleman thief Barrington Blowtorch, and some politically-correct policemen. Worryingly, half the sketches were very thin, obvious or dumb (like a Geordie pretending to be gay to perv on his sexy friend, or a baby in a high-powered business meeting), while a character called Herr Schull (a gay Nazi in pink uniform) was a rather uncomfortable and vaguely homophobic caricature I thought we left behind in the '70s with Benny Hill.

If the runaway success of The Pub Landlord gave you the impression that Al Murray was a one-trick pony, in his new sketch show he proves he can get laughs playing people with hair, too.

Often these series shove all their best sketches into the first episode then taper off in the following weeks. The opening sketch of Murray's series about a sex-mad West Country dad, however, is probably the weakest of the lot.

Fortunately, after starting out on a bum note, things can - and do - only get better. Highlights include Murray and Jenny Eclair cast as a married couple who do voice-overs and comedian Simon Brodkin, who appears in many of the sketches, brings his own creation along to the party, footballer Jason Bents.

Elsewhere, the spirit of Benny Hill lives on in Murray's gay Nazi, while at the other end of the scale we have the PC PCs - an obvious gag that's been waiting in the wings for yonks. "We know you're in there but more importantly we know that you had a very unhappy childhood..."