The problem is that if you tune in at 9.00pm for the godawful Krod, you won't get to see them because by 9.30pm you'll have fled the room, weeping over the demise of popular culture.

Last night's episode of Krod was the third. For those who succeeded in missing the first two, it's a fantasy set in some quasi-medieval realm of warriors and noblemen. One word for its comic style would be "crude". There's another, more obvious word, but we can't print it. A fat man says something stupid. A gay man says something camp. A young woman with big breasts says something naughty about sex. Krod plainly yearns to be Blackadder, but it comes across as if it were written by Baldrick.

Krod Mandoon 2 review

Oh. The double-bill opening was mild fun and there were flashes of promise, but this third episode was terrible. So bad that it barely warrants me putting much effort into reviewing it.

Bizarre, medieval fantasy-comedy Krod Mandoon is starting to find its feet. Matt Lucas is in fine fettle this week as the evil Dongalour, trying to outsmart Krod (Sean Maguire) and his hapless band of freedom fighters. "We must find out who the director of communications is and have him slain," says Lucas after a very West-Wing-like press conference. Some of the slapstick is a little too slapdash, but it'll probably become a cult hit so you may as well get into it now.

Another episode filled with silliness. Kröd and Aneka fake their own deaths and their bodies are delivered to the magnificent Matt Lucas's Dongalor, who checks for signs of life by sticking his face in Aneka's cleavage. Kröd wishes he could do the same but Aneka has dumped him and a rival hunk looks like wrecking his dreams of a reunion.

What is the point in parodying the sword and sorcery genre when it is already mired in absurdity? Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire never comes close to answering the question.

Impressively lavish in its production values, the show desperately needs more jokes put in, or the few it had taken out, to succeed as either broad comedy or fantasy adventure. As it is, it totters ineffectually between the two and feels like a very, very, very long sketch indeed.

Sean Maguire takes the title role as the swashbuckling rebel, who, with a motley band of ineffectual comrades in tow, has the temerity to challenge the authority of the Evil Empire. The Evil Empire's local representative Chancellor Dongalor is played with admirable gusto, but no finesse whatsoever, by Matt Lucas.

Since leaving EastEnders for Hollywood, Maguire has clearly put a lot of effort into developing a convincing physique and the requisite American accent to go with it. And, to be fair, Maguire is actually rather good as Mandoon, displaying a deft touch for self-effacing, mock heroic comedy.

Lucas, on the other hand, is given only the feeblest of characterisation to work with - variations upon cheery, psychotic camp - which becomes very tiresome, very quickly. Every baddie role, even such an idiotic one, needs a little bit of genuine menace, which was sadly and totally lacking from Lucas' performance.

Krod Mandoon does have its funny moments, but there just aren't enough of them. However, there is something likeable about the show and its admirable, if hapless efforts to entertain. Like Krod Mandoon himself, it is endearing but ineffectual.

I came to Krod Mandoon (BBC2) cold, as it were, which is probably the best way to come... Oh, grow up! But don't bother doing so before you watch Krod, which is a sitcom of inordinate silliness aimed at sofa-bound bonding pairs of, I assume, teenage boys who have outgrown Little Britain and their dads who loved Red Dwarf.

Krod is an amusingly needy-but-buff hero (a smartly cast Sean Maguire) battling Matt Lucas, the evil Dongalor, who wears fur and is into beheading and all the usual power-crazed stuff you get in the kind of magic kingdom that's a few Hobbits short of Middle-Earth. The only completely baffling - apart from everything that's meant to be baffling, obviously - thing about Krod is why there was an hour of it, even for an opener, when no sitcom in TV history has sustained comedy for 60 consecutive minutes.

Krod Mandoon is a spoof, a difficult thing to pull off because the humour is limited to the range of the drama it's sending up. Mandoon is a Dungeons & Dragons fantasy, a bit Robin Hood, a bit Lord of the Rings, a bit Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess. What it most resembles is a cartoon-like Shrek. It has a good cast and a remarkably generous set and costume budget. It all looks as if it has been performed in some tax-deductible bit of eastern Europe. Everyone turns in a perfectly fine performance, though Kröd himself has the hardest time, being both a hunk and an idiot. Playing a fool isn't the same as being a fool. Then there's Roger Allam, who seems to be going for the TV record for inappropriate casting. At any moment, I expect him to turn up in Hollyoaks.

What kills Krod stone dead before he's out of the first episode, what makes this a long hour of desperate, rictus tedium, is the script. The quick-fire, don't-draw-a-breath, rat-a-tat-tat wit and repartee of this god-awful script is solely and exclusively made up of single entendres about sex. Brilliant juvenile dirty sex talk is one of my favourite things, but this, this woeful, repetitive, telegraphed, winking, prudish smut, was just dire. Here was a great invented fantasy world, full of comic potential, but the script unerringly missed it for the state-of-the-arse joke of least resistance.

At the very opposite end of the comedy scale was Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire, a fantasy satire starring Matt Lucas. Anyone who had seen the title would have calculated the chances of it not being bad as pitifully low.

It is a title that makes it very clear that you are entering a world where the name "Krod Mandoon" is a potent comedy currency - a world where knights say "Ni!", and every night is 2-4-1 down the Student Union bar. Krod Mandoon (played, with wilful casting randomness, by Sean Maguire, aka Tegs from Grange Hill) is an uptight warrior. His gang of freedom fighters include a black jive-talking genie with erratic magical powers, and Muldoon's pugilistic girlfriend - a foxy pagan who refuses to wear knickers. This threadbare band of wackily inverted stereotypes has an arch-nemesis: Chancellor Dongalor (Matt Lucas), whose comedy chops are left uselessly over-revved on lines as poor as "I am scared of nothing! Except turtles. They give me the willies".

The problem with the show is that, as a genre, fantasy is, of course, already absolutely ludicrous. You can't satirise it by making it even more ludicrous - to do so just results in an Upper Sixth trainwreck of wee-wee-jokes, mild homophobia and gurning.

Last night's TV: Krod Mandoon

Krod Mandoon featured a dungeon full of prisoners - which is where its scriptwriter belongs.

Bad comedy is a peculiar thing, isn't it? Watching it is rather like looking at the emperor's new clothes - slightly uncomfortable, more than a little embarrassing, with the lurking dread that maybe it isn't them at all who's at fault, but you, you and your own lame-arsed sense of humour.

Disclaimers aside, I think we can all agree on one thing: BBC2's spoof-adventure Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire is definitely not funny. Worse: it's boring. Had the emperor walked out wearing it, no one would have been fooled, though they may have had a few laughs, which is more than I got last night.

Basically, Kröd, for reasons unknown, is on a mission to free General Arcadius (no, me neither) who's been imprisoned by the evil emperor (him again!) for some or other reason. Of course, Kröd - played somewhat improbably by the Nineties pin-up Sean Maguire - isn't alone. With him he brings a hapless band of conspirators: Zezelryck the warlock, doing his best Eddie Murphy impression, Aneka the knickerless warrior princess who'd rather be stripping than duelling (incidentally, the only female character. Thanks for the thought, guys!) and Loquasto, half-man, half-pig. Or, possibly, just suffering from some kind of swine flu.

Speaking of emperors, what's Matt Lucas doing playing this one? He's actually funny, the only decent thing in it. I wonder if he gets to write his own lines? I could've sworn the script improved considerably when he appeared, playing a David Brent-inspired dictator, out to claim the blood of Maguire's Kröd. I don't know about you, but as far as I'm concerned the sooner he does, the better. Though I won't be sticking around in the meantime. Next!