Victor Lewis-Smith

The Fast Show has its feet in Dick Emery, its brain in Monty Python, its groin in Benny Hill, and its heart in Viz, and the result is a monster of a show. The performances are excellent (John Thomson and Robin Driscoll are a particular joy), Arch Dyson's direction is superb and, while I ration myself to one use of the word "genius" each alternate blue moon, I believe Paul Whitehouse may be touched by it (and, by a simple process of elimination, we're getting some idea of how much Harry Enfield owes to him).

As far as I know, Hale and Pace are the world's only double act consisting of two straight men, and LWT's joke department should, by rights, face immediate prosecution under the Trade Descriptions Act (1972).

Nothing is worse than a joke that's gone on too long and, now that Granada (whose reputation rests on quality popular broadcasting) has taken over LWT, it's high time Beadle was no longer about.

Fortunately Bob Mills can be exonerated, since he wears his prisoner costume solely for comic effect when presenting In Bed With Medinner (LWT). The anaemic London station must have benefited from Granada's blood transfusion because, for the first time in years, it's produced a genuinely funny, original series, albeit transmitted after midnight.

Sorry, but this just won't do. Not funny enough to be comedy, nor profound enough to be drama, it might have limped along unnoticed in the early Seventies but we expect more than decent, honest Northern clichés nowadays.

When Spitting Image began in the early 80s, Gillray met John Logie Baird, and we witnessed the concoction of some splendidly dangerous tv vitriol, thanks largely to a producer (John Lloyd) prepared to argue with the ITV legals for the inclusion of uncomfortable material, right up to transmission. But that burning passion has long since departed, the editorial tone has become self-satisfied and sloppy, and the show, with its lucrative advertising spin-offs, is now part of the cosy world it once professed to despise.

Some of the jokes are so old that they can barely stand either, but they're only old because they're good and Sykes uses them to brilliant effect. Blending Christmas-cracker gags with farce and slapstick, he gently undermines the cosy domestic world with a manic streak of logic and produces that rarest of hybrids: a surreal sitcom that's actually funny.

For such a dreadful sitcom, set in a travel agency, only one destination seems appropriate. Phucket.

Watching Murder Most Horrid (BBC2) proved to be a truly horrific way of killing half an hour and I soon fell into a childlike "are we nearly there yet?" state, as each woebegone minute crawled desolately by like a funeral. [...] Last night's offering, We All Hate Granny, was certainly not a suitable vehicle for comedy, nor would it have passed its horror MoT.

Which brings me to Michael Aitkens and his latest comedy series, Honey For Tea (BBC1, Sunday). [...] This is, without the slightest doubt, the worst sitcom the BBC has produced in a decade, stunning even the studio audience (who are let in free, and are, therefore, always grateful) into occasional silence.