Victor Lewis-Smith

Paul Merton - The Series is extraordinary from the opening moments. Eleanor Rigby-like strings pound away melancholically in a minor key, with a sombreness rarely encountered in TV comedy. [...] But these monologues are far more than a string of disconnected jokes. Each one possesses a strange distorted logic of its own, a subtle twist that transforms a simple idea into something utterly baffling, the verbal equivalent of a Mobius strip.

Similarly, I suspect it's only a matter of time before Seamus Cassidy, Channel 4's commissioning editor for comedy, holds a press conference to admit that he is, in fact, an ex bingo-caller who knows nothing about comedy. Certainly, the number of genuinely amusing programmes he's commissioned over the past four years can be counted on the fingers of a mitten. What else could explain the lamentable standard of his department's output, which reached a new nadir last night with Mr. Don and Mr. George (C4)?

When a performer utters the ellipsis "laygennlemen" you know you've strayed into lumpen territory, but Rock With Laughter (BBC1) takes you further, deep into previously uncharted regions of imbecility. Other "artists" have a discreet cross, or mark, on which to stand, but Mr Davro clearly requires something less subtle - a 12-foot circle with his name emblazoned across it - from which to announce that the theme of the show was Saturday Night.

When the two worlds of comedy and sci-fi collide, the recent is usually calamitous. In the cinema Mel Brooks's Spaceballs proved to be about as amusing and successful as the launch of Challenger, while on TV the lamentable Red Dwarf shows that four-dimensional space-time continuums do not comnpensate for one-dimensional characters. But last night on Space Virgins from Planet Sex Space Virgins from Planet Sex achieved a triumphant synthesis, with a dense, merciless parody of the excesses of Sixties and Seventies sci-fi movies - an absurd fantasy world full of intergalactic space craft shaped like cervical caps and futurist women in micro skirts and Mary Quant eye liner.

What sets French And Saunders apart from the rest is their quirky and original choice of targets and unscrupulous attention to detail. Any idiot can attempt pastiche, but few would think of spoofing The House of Eliott, and even fewer could produce such an acutely observed parody as The House of Idiot, in which the problems of filming period drama on a limited budget were cruelly, but hilariously, exposed.

Doubtless Sandi Toksvig and the other writers - yes, it took three people to construct this mighty work - will claim that this mighty work was parodying traditional British farce, deconstructing the genre. But they weren't. All they were doing was producing this mighty work.

What did they schedule? Grace and Favour. I rest my case. This is a programme that makes 'Allo 'Allo look like Beckett [...] This is not so much a comedy programme, more your funny aunts and uncles doing a routine at the Christmas party. You simply have to feel well-disposed towards the actors for it to succeed.

Absolutely Fabulous (BBC2) has not merely turned to drink, but is fuelled by it. Everyone and everything is constantly tight - characters, script, acting, directing - and it works magnificently. The original premise is brilliant and shows no signs of flagging, the relationships between the protagonists are constantly developing and everybody shines, even June without Terry.

Bottom is an unfortunate name for a programme, inviting all manner of scatological put-downs from jaded TV critics; a more appropriate title might be Living Off Past Glories as Rik Mayall and partner rehash one more time the same limited repertoire of puerile, violent and nonsensical gestures that worked so brilliantly a decade ago in The Young Ones.

From a man with charisma to a man with charisn'tma, Rory McGrath who, on the evidence of the first edition of A Word In Your Era (BBC2, Sunday), has the rare ability to de-oxygenate a studio within moments of entering it. [...] Heavily scripted ad-libs plummet to the floor like turkeys, while a heavily dubbed studio audience launches itself unconvincingly into yet another pre-cued paroxysm. John Wells as Queen Victoria did his best, but getting this hopeless format to work would be like trying to kickstart a Jumbo Jet.