Bob Servant

Brian Cox blows like a salty hurricane through another episode of this garrulous sitcom. In a moment of madness, Bob lobs a bin bag full of frozen burgers on to the skull of a love rival and is charged with aggravated assault. His regular brief, Objection McNally, is drunk and trouserless, so Bob conducts his own defence, leading to a pleasingly retro courtroom farce in which our man bickers with the jury, calls the judge "Skipper" and asks his nearest and dearest to perjure themselves. He's a guilty pleasure.

Bob Servant, despite Brian Cox, and my having loved his first outing, isn't (yet) funny. Cox and Miller are deeply talented comedy actors, let down here by pilot scripts. I know that the writer of the second, Neil Forsyth, is capable of far greater nuanced stuff, and a fine pawky Dundonian sense of humour, than which there are few finer this side of Brooklyn, and can only hope that he and Cox haven't already alienated audiences. BBC Four prides itself on "experimental", but these should have been sure things. Wh'appen?