Alan Davies

BBC2 green lights Alan Davies chef comedy

BBC2 has greenlit Whites, the kitchen comedy penned by Peep Show star Matt King and featuring Alan Davies as a lacklustre celebrity chef.

Renwick confirms return of Jonathan Creek

Alan Davies is set to reprise his role as magician sleuth Jonathan Creek for a second feature-length special for Easter next year, writer David Renwick has confirmed.

The Judas Tree was initially slated to air next Christmas, but the writer said that budget issues had pushed the project back.

Stephen Fry's comedy-quiz QI has become so popular that it's transferred from BBC2 to BBC1 (a la Have I Got News For You), but otherwise it's business as usual for the comedians given schoolboy roles, with Fry as the indubitable headmaster and Alan Davies the class dunce. Tradition dictates that, as the sixth series, the trivia revolves around the letter 'F'. Of course, things aren't particularly strict, and conversations veer off into random, surreal tangents. The only disappointing thing with QI is a tendency to make smutty, schoolboy jokes usually involving sexual innuendo. There's nothing wrong with such comedy, but QI is guilty of spending far too long giggling at crudities, when the real gems of the show are to be found elsewhere.

After a five-year absence, Jonathan Creek returned with a two-hour special, The Grinning Man. Vanishing guests in a haunted attic was the theme, with Alan Davies joined by Sheridan Smith as his latest sleuthing sidekick.

As an audience participation puzzle it couldn't be faulted. I spent the final 30 minutes hurling increasingly desperate and ultimately incorrect speculations at the screen - It's a false knife!, It's a false corpse!, The magician is the reincarnation of his grandfather! etc - but never came close to unravelling any of the several mysteries contained in David Renwick's script.

But for all its ingenuity, Renwick's work just couldn't support its excessively indulgent running time, with the drama beginning to sag long before the murderer was revealed.

Of all the revivals dredged up by the BBC this Christmas, this was the worst. We thought it would never end; Alan Davies still can't act very well; the mystery was far from gripping; the denoument was silly. There's no clamour for a new series from us.

QI goes Dutch

The Netherlands is to get its own version of QI. Public broadcaster VARA has bought the rights to remake the Stephen Fry panel show, with Dutch author Arthur Japin as host. Comedian Thomas van Luyn will be the only regular guest, as Alan Davies is in the BBC version.

Alan Davies Interview

Leading man Alan Davies was under no illusions when he reflected on returning to the role after a five year absence.

Stephen Fry's QI to move to BBC1

BBC2's Stephen Fry-hosted comedy panel show QI is set to move to BBC1 for its new series.

The show, which sees panellists such as Alan Davies competing to provide the most interesting answer to obscure trivia questions, is one of BBC2's most watched programmes, hitting 4.8 million viewers in November - the channel's third highest rating of 2007.

Discussions are currently taking place within the BBC about the move, which is expected to be given the green light soon.

"It is only natural when a show becomes so popular to look at taking it to a wider audience but nothing is confirmed yet," a BBC spokeswoman said.

Alan Davies stars as Jack the dog, observing Sarah (Claire Goose), her clothes, her little ways, all with the ironic devotion of a really clever pet. Sarah has a boyfriend, Adrian (Darren Boyd), on whom Jack is not at all keen. She also has an annoying mother (Deborah Norton). We can hear Jack's inner thoughts. No one else can. By Graeme Garden, from an original idea by the late Debbie Barham.

This week brought a poignant reminder of this tradition with the broadcast of About a Dog (Radio 4), the realisation of the last project proposed by comedy writer Debbie Barham before her death, at 26, from anorexia last year. She knew all about the different perceptions of men and women where comedy is concerned, mailing her early manuscripts into editors for consideration using her initials rather than her first name so as to bypass likely prejudice.

Barham began sending sketches and jokes into radio at 14, and despite writing to great acclaim for television, retained her love of radio's unique comic possibilities. This short series about a dog's-eye view of the human world, scripted by Graeme Garden, suits the medium perfectly and avoids the anthropomorphic schmaltz that visuals would bring to it. The result is a very affectionate tribute to Barham, and one you immediately sense has been a labour of love. It's also superb, gentle comedy in its own right, with Alan Davies excelling as Jack, the four-legged friend who always sounds at least mildly put out and bewildered by human foolishness.

While he can't understand sexual foreplay ("I just trot up," he says, "give it a quick sniff and murmur, 'stand still a minute'. That usually does the trick"), he has learned that eating his mistress's dinner from the kitchen worktop isn't a popular move. So he licks it instead. "I can never remember if I like olives," he slobbers, sampling her pizza topping. "No, don't like olives. Actually, that pizza looks better for a bit of a lick - what they call a glaze."