Alan Bennett (I)

ITV3, never previously a destination channel, looked as if it might have a hit on its hands with Ladies of Letters, a TV adaptation of Carole Hayman and Lou Wakefield's popular series of books of the same name consisting of letters between two fictional friends. It had previously been made into a popular Radio 4 series starring Prunella Scales and Patricia Routledge, and the television version had secured the equally redoubtable Anne Reid and Maureen Lipman. But, sadly, the transition proved an unhappy one.

During yesterday's opener, the sight of the two actresses speaking the letters to camera while engaged in a bit of cooking or a surreptitious sherry was far from enough to hold the attention. The letters bore only the minimum of narrative momentum and the subtleties of the occasional malapropism and shift in tone were overwhelmed by one's sheer desperation to see an actual event take place on screen. Perhaps the prosaic lesson of it all is that Ladies of Letters may be very jolly and wry on the radio but when it comes to TV, unless you've got a writer of the calibre of Alan Bennett on board, it's just too boring to watch talking heads for half an hour.

Analysis by The Custard TV

With great guile, writer Karl Minns weaves together three monologues to tell the stories of the three members of girl group Cats Eyes, teasing out the true story. He shows the same touches as Alan Bennett did in Talking Heads, only gently revealing that the people talking about their lives are painting a rosy picture of misery.

Unless you're a regular at the Edinburgh Fringe you've probably never heard of Count Arthur Strong. But you will soon, for he is a brilliant comedy creation. Strong is a self-deluded, exceptionally rude and linguistically challenged old luvvie who sounds a bit like Alan Bennett might if he was morphed with Alexei Sayle. In real life, Strong is the comedian Steve Delaney, but reality is thankfully overlooked in this warped day-in-the-life of 'a doyen of light entertainment'. I laughed until I hurt.

The big question that the first Grumpy Old Men raised last Friday was: what was wrong with Paul Ross the week they were filming? Grumpy Old Men was prime Ross territory, one of those curious programmes invented at the end of the 20th century where celebrities don't tell anecdotes or share facts, but just say very ordinary things about very ordinary things ("I don't think we ever had a Hula Hoop - my friend's sister did, though"), as if they were trying to be in an Alan Bennett play, but didn't quite understand how they work.

It reminded me of a dual-character version of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads in that the characters subtly unfolded before our eyes in their own quietly amusing, but sad, words.

The first in LWT's new series of Alan Bennett plays, Me! I'm Afraid of Virginia Woolf, was one word too long in its tide but otherwise perfectly judged.

Me! I'm Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the first of six plays by Alan Bennett to be produced by LWT was very funny indeed with all the sadness that the very word gay suggests.