Adil Ray

This falls firmly into the category of comedy Marmite but fans of Citizen Khan generally begin their defence with: 'I know I shouldn't like it but...' with the 'but' revolving around the daft giggles offered up by Adil Ray's puffed-up leading man, his balloon of self-importance rarely pricked by anything so bothersome as reality. This Christmas special finds him obsessing over being named Muslim Of The Month at his local mosque.

We all have our comedy secret, and Citizen Khan is mine. (Not any more, obviously.) I shouldn't love it - it's unsophisticated, silly and broad, with an inept man-child who's a self-important buffoon in a cheap suit at its centre. But it's good-hearted, optimistic and entirely without side, and reminds me of sitcoms of my childhood like Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em and Terry and June (and kids love Citizen Khan).

In this Christmas special Khan's long-suffering wife wants to celebrate Christmas while Khan (Adil Ray) yearns to be named Muslim of the Month for donating more tat than anyone to the local mosque. There's no plot as such, it's just a series of pratfalls and nonsense involving a badly cooked turkey and Mr Khan playing Santa for entirely self-seeking reasons.

For all the criticism levelled at its representation of Muslims, it's the dearth of funny, well-written jokes that really plagues Citizen Khan. In this Christmas special, Mrs Khan decides that the family should have a traditional family do, and sends her Scrooge-like husband off to find a tree and some decorations for the occasion. Mr Khan (Adil Ray) reluctantly obliges, and a series of comic mishaps ensues.

The slapstick humour is arbitrary and predictable and almost every one-liner painfully contrived. Mr Khan himself is relatively compelling as a mickey-taking buffoon, but the supporting cast are bland, one-note characters who fare badly without Ray's on-screen presence. The episode does have some heart and there is something resembling a pay-off, but don't expect this mediocre offering to split any sides.

Citizen Khan: why Muslims love Christmas

The sitcom star would like to make it clear that Muslims think it's a wonderful celebration almost on a par with Ramadan - and that Father Christmas is Pakistani.

In a bid to perk up his depressed mother-in-law, Mr Khan (Adil Ray) takes her to the bingo but - and this is the basis of an entire episode's worth of action - it's at a working men's club rather than the mosque. Now into its second series, Ray's sitcom revels in what it probably thinks is a gentle parody of xenophobia - Khan delivers a speech on why he doesn't want ginger people working at the mosque, for example - but inverted bigotry, if it ever was funny, certainly doesn't seem that hilarious now.

Adil Ray returns in the title role of this cheerfully old-fashioned sitcom, which seems designed to underscore the point that, hey, Muslim families have the same complications and worries as everyone else. Really, who'd have thought? Tonight, our man Khan is beset by daughter troubles, with one failing exams while another has a head full of wedding plans. What is a good dad to do?

Radio Times review

When the first series stirred controversy some commentators pointed out that treating Muslims as part of the cultural scenery by subjecting them to an old-school domestic sitcom was a kind of flattery. It might be more flattering if the comedy was better. Adil Ray's clumsily self-important "community leader" is a great character but the series rhythms are painfully dated, an effortful farce that relies on jokes about farting in the bath and tempting granny off her armchair with biscuits.

In this episode, Khan has to make a good impression on one daughter's would-be bridesmaid as well as the other daughter's potential headmaster - a creaking recipe for disaster. But occasionally a joke carries some weight: "We Pakistanis don't have bridesmaids," observes Khan at one point, "In our culture, your bride becomes your maid - your housemaid, chambermaid, teasmaid..."

Primetime BBC comedy has been stuck in a '70s groove in recent years, with such laboured, lazy throwbacks as The Wright Way and Mrs Brown's Boys. This fetishistic nostalgia for some half-remembered grannies 'n' kids' tea-time sitcom nirvana reaches a heady low with the return of Citizen Khan for another series of toddler-friendly mugging and end-of-the-pier smut.

Adil Ray's puffed-up paterfamilias and would-be community leader Mr Khan was one of the highlights of R4's spoof phone-in Down the Line and its maligned TV offshoot Bellamy's People, but here he's stifled by a routine family setting and truly appalling gags that don't so much pepper the script as smother it with lumpy custard. Missed opportunities to celebrate and/or spear cultural attitudes abound, with creaky fallback references to the hokey-cokey, Lulu, bingo, the novelty of men in the kitchen and internet-savvy pensioners flooding in to plug the gaps.

There's a neat turn from Felix Dexter and a welcome return to telly for Matthew Cottle (the ginge from Game On), but these are drops in an ocean of twaddle, the depths of which are reached as Mr Khan mimes a selection of farm animals to his - yes, you guessed it - much-despised mother-in-law.

Citizen Khan and the importance of critic-proof shows

The critics hated Adil Ray's sitcom, but viewers loved it, much like Mrs Brown's Boys and Splash! If reviewers ignore popular appeal, they risk being ignored themselves.

Adil Ray: 'Don't allow yourself to be offended'

Sitcom writer on dealing with death threats and the importance of creating nostalgic family comedy.