Victor Lewis-Smith

"The jokes are a bit laboured, but this is harmless enough fun," declared the Radio Times when this second series began, adding ominously that it "relies very heavily on the charm of the central performer". This lukewarm diagnosis was confirmed by last night's episode, a revamped Man About The House in which Douglas (Chris Langham) interacted with the scatty Kate and the dizzy blonde Mel (Amanda Holden) in an office where wilful misunderstandings were so rife that they led not to humour, but to despair.

A spoof documentary about stately homes is a potential gold mine for a keen-eyed comic. [...] yet this was unobservant, badly-scripted tosh.

Ha ha, Ern, you can see the join

Eric Morecambe was one of the comedy greats and deserved better than this ramshackle documentary which squeezed every last mawkish drop out of a decline that was sad, but by no means tragic.

These thoughts came to me last night as I watched Victoria Wood's dire new sitcom Dinnerladies (BBC1), because so much of the language wa sa blatant imitation of Alan Bennett's sublime phrasing.

Stellar stuff in suburbia

This second series confirms what I thought last year, that Sessions, Cornwell, and Peter Richardson have together created an inspired comedic masterpiece.

Thanks for the memory

Despite Christopher Norton's tinny score, this was a first-class tribute to a unique talent, and further proof that David Liddiment is, miraculously, starting to pull the ITV network up by its bootstraps. I've been a fan of Sooty for years, and not a post-modern inverted-commas fan either. No, I've always liked him because he's genuinely funny, and his show possesses a warmth that few children's programmes have nowadays.

Give me the ads any day

However, now that I'm back, the normal abysmal level of service seems to have been resumed, if Friday night's edition of The Creatives (BBC2) was anything to go by. Those who still remember the execrable Mr Don and Mr George will be astounded that Jack Docherty and Moray Hunter have been allowed to script a sitcom again, and the really bad news is that they've not only written this dire series, about an Edinburgh advertising agency, but are appearing in it, too.

Babes In The Wood (ITV) is about three gorgeous blonde babes who live in St John's Wood - which is, if the residents will forgive me, not a particularly hip or happening area of north-west London. [...] This is unassuming, unpretentious but predictable comedy, with a little bit of Friends and a dollop of Man About The House, with Karl Howman in the eunuch Richard O'Sullivan role.

The ego has landed in it

If only the host of So Graham Norton (C4) had received a visit from an RSPCA vet three years ago, then he could have been painlessly put to sleep in the early stages of his disease. Instead, he's now spending each Friday night painfully putting his entire audience to sleep, with a personality so relentlessly self-obsessed and extrovert that he makes Bonnie Langford seem like a recluse.

Tricks of the comedy trade

I presume that's why, during last night's Funny Women (BBC2), Bennett generously referred to the Kitty monologues written by Victoria Wood, even though the meagre sketches she'd knocked out for Patricia Routledge were simply reheated morsels foraged from Bennett's table. Routledge is an immaculate character actress, and Bennett was clearly pleased to be able to praise her artistry, but the programme was nevertheless a thinly-veiled excuse for the BBC to give one more outing to several dozen elderly sitcom clips, albeit interspersed with some memorable observations from a writer who's surley Britain's greatest Talking Head.