Bringing this Radio 4 comedy (it was then called Down the Line) to TV has cost it some of its mojo. That said, there are funny moments to savour. These include pub bore Chris Nibbs's (Charlie Higson) assertion that British greatness is epitomised by the ability to produce a fine custard cream. Also amusing is Simon Day's cockney villain threatening extreme violence if Gary Bellamy (Rhys Thomas) looks him in the eye.

In the second episode of Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson's comedy, the fictitious Radio 4 talk-show host, Gary Bellamy (Rhys Thomas) has left the studio to meet some of his listeners, ostensibly to find out what it means to be British. In reality it's just a good excuse to showcase a terrific stream of comic performances, each of which is brilliantly observed. Tonight, there's a hotel-management student who reveres the land of Shakespeare and Jimmy Savile, a posh architect from the Cotswolds who happens to be black, a brigadier and colonel representing the face of the modern British Army ("We're primarily concerned with building bridges") and, best of all, a poet and national treasure from Yorkshire who seems remarkably familiar.

The Fast Show is back. Only they've tweaked the format, introduced a spurious linking theme and changed the title to Bellamy's People. But otherwise, it's Charlie Higson, Paul Whitehouse and their repertory company, frequently unrecognisable beneath mountains of prosthetic make-up, parading a quick-fire array of quirky, comic creations.

Based on Radio 4's spoof, Down the Line, the show has late-night phone-in host Gary Bellamy abandon his cosy studio for the open roads of Great Britain and, as the credits are at great pains to point out, Northern Ireland, to meet the people.

These include reformed bank robbers, self-appointed community leaders, opinionated plasterers, hysterical female fans and two elderly sisters, divided by their extreme political views, who converse in a gibberish language of their own making.

Bellamy's People isn't startlingly original and is gently amusing rather than thigh- slappingly funny, but it is still worth watching for the beautifully observed performances and the occasional flash of genius in the script. My favourite line came from Higson's elderly country gentleman, proudly showing off his computer. "If we don't keep up with the times," he muses, "we might as well just lie down in the road and be run over by the next pantechnicon."

Bellamy's People was originally a very funny radio satire about radio phone-ins, a simple idea that nailed a whole host of subjects and bigotry. Transferring it to television has one innate and possibly insuperable problem: the pictures. Watching a radio show is not a lot more exciting than watching rocks grow. So they dispensed with the radio bit, just keeping the phone-in host, a forgettable lad who goes out to meet English characters, mostly played by Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson in rubber prosthetics. They ran through the familiar gamut of their characters for no apparent reason except amusingly to enunciate and repeat familiar clichés. After half an hour, they stopped, which was a relief.

This is The Fast Show remade as Little Britain. It's the flaccid end of a series of strained stereotypical impressions that were once immensely funny and original, and are now annoying and repetitive and reminiscent of a time in your life when this was where real catchphrases came from. The whole genre of characters without purpose needs to be revitalised, retuned, rebored and recalled.

This Week's TV: Bellamy's People

Paul Whitehouse returns to form with a gentle spoof of the celebrity road trip that's packed with glorious loons.

In taking this show from what started out as a radio parody show and putting it on TV, the essential element of humour seems to have been exsanguinated from it.

That's not to say that some of the actors didn't put in good performances, they did - notably an understated Rhys Thomas as Bellamy - but the show seems to have been too liberally daubed with tar from the same brush as Little Britain, and I have to say, that show didn't appeal to me either.

It's not that I'm lacking in the ability to be amused by the quirky, but when done often enough, quirky becomes clichéd. And I felt that most of the characters in Bellamy's People - though some were original in concept - became an embodiment of all that I suspect the writers, Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson, were trying to avoid.

The show seemed to want to seek out eccentricity and capitalise on it, and fair enough, if it had been a little less eccentric, might well have worked, but some were simply too 'eccentric' to be remotely believable. Take for example the sisters living together; one a fan of a Nazi regime, one a communist and n'er the twain shall meet without forced dialogue it would seem.

That said though, I did find the sweetly drippy Mr Khan character was fun; his call to get more Muslim shows on TV, such as Strictly No Dancing was amusing.

But to every silver lining there's a cloud and white van man was way too overdone, but arguably one of the more realistic characters. We've all met the type of course, but again, white van man has been done to death.

Overall, I guess there's a possibility that as it goes on, Bellamy's People might grow wings and fly, but though it's not a total dodo, it might well be on the verge of extinction unless it manages to attract that most sought after of comedy prefixes, 'cult'. If it does, it might live, but otherwise, I think this one could well be destined for a retrograde step back into its original habitat, and perhaps it should never have been taken from there in the first place.

Last night's TV: Bellamy's People

Bellamy's People are a funny old bunch all right - but they were funnier on the radio.

Welcome To Bellamy's Babes (Fan Club)

Bellamy's Babes fanclub founder Patricia Webb will be keeping us up to date with fanclub activities each week on the blog.

TV Review: Bellamy's People

Rhys Thomas stars as Bellamy and does a decent enough job of playing the straight-man in amongst the idiots created for the show. However, the whole thing hangs together in such a beige manner that it's hard to buy into it all.

Bellamy's People Episode 1

Whitehouse and Higson both remain gifted comic performers, and there were some amusing moments and characters here. It's just a shame it started to bore me after 10 minutes and seemed to go limp on the screen.