Alison Graham

Radio Times review

Ben Miller perfectly describes his dolorous comedy hero, the incomparable Tony Hancock, as "carrying a sheep-like despondency and a cuddly intellectual misery". Miller first fell under Hancock's spell as a child, when his dad told him he had to watch The Blood Donor, arguably Hancock's finest half-hour. "I'd never seen anything so funny in my life."

In this sweet tribute Miller potters through Hancock's life, visiting the hotel in Bournemouth where he was brought up and chatting to his biographers. Best of all, he visits Hancock's writers, the brilliant Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, who had a sometimes fractious relationship with a difficult man. And Miller has some fun with papers from the BBC archives that describe the volatile Hancock as "a moody perfectionist with a great interest in money and no sense of loyalty to the Corporation". Ouch.

The comedy gets much broader and blunter in the second episode of David Walliams's school sitcom, as seedy and inappropriate gym teacher Mr Gunn (Philip Glenister) thrusts pointedly in front of comely new French mistress Miss Postern (Catherine Tate).

Gunn and Mr Church (Walliams), the buttoned-up science department deputy head, are locked in a battle for Miss Postern's attention while she plays one off against the other. But she's a bit thick (she's never been to France and you have to wonder, generally, at her level of French-speaking ability), falling apart in front of frosty, iron-clad head teacher Ms Baron (Frances de la Tour, whom we don't see enough of). Tonight the staff, in a bit of Walliam's Britain's Got Talent self-reference, organise a teachers' talent show.

New sitcoms on mainstream channels always stare directly into the jaws of darkness as purse-lipped audiences wait, arms crossed, to be entertained. Big School probably faces an even more hostile reception as it's co-written (with the Dawson Brothers) by David Walliams, who also stars. I bet there are a few people waiting to take him down a peg or two.

So please give Big School a chance. It doesn't ooze sophistication, in fact it's pretty silly. But it has a great cast and I heard myself laughing out loud in a few places. Walliams is secondary school deputy head of science Mr Church, a shy man with a terrible perm who's inexperienced with women and who listens to Phil Collins in his Austin Allegro. But he's transfixed by the new French teacher, comely Miss Postern (Catherine Tate). Big School turns out to be rather sweetly old-fashioned - in a good way.

The television version of Steve Delaney's Radio 4 series has jaggedly divided both audiences and critics. But I will heretically declare that I think it's been a hugely successful transfer and I love the Count (Delaney) on television even more than I do on radio. So there.

There's been a subtle poignancy to the TV series and the feel of a proper ensemble comedy as Delaney and co-writer/director Graham Linehan surrounded Arthur with a clutch of endearing misfit friends. And one sensible friend, Michael, biographer and son of Arthur's one-time music hall collaborator, played by the peerless Rory Kinnear. As the series ends Arthur is still mourning the loss of his friend Katya and decides to hold a seance. It's sad and funny.

Inept human being Count Arthur Strong (Steve Delaney) has become a dog walker and decides to enlist one of the pooches in a bid for stardom when he auditions for a Britain's Got Talent-type show. It's all as hopeless as you would expect - and by you, I mean the two or three other people who are watching Count Arthur Strong. I knew it would be a niche delight, but there you are, it's still a delight, albeit one withering in obscurity.

The brilliant Rory Kinnear is brilliant again as hapless biographer Michael, this time under anaesthetic after a dog bite, minutes after he's tried to describe his assailant to the world's worst police sketch artist. A surreal treasure.

There's a tour de force of furious farce from Count Arthur Strong (aka comedian Steve Delaney) tonight when he "entertains" his friends with a ramshackle, thoroughly unhinged version of Windmills of Your Mind. It's as gloriously terrible as you'd expect, yet even this cannot prepare you for the demented montage of songs from popular musicals that follows. The Count as the Phantom of the Opera, with a piece of bacon on his cheek? As Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music? The hopeless ex-music-hall "star" decides to do what he does best (ahem) when the gang are trapped in the café while riots rage outside. It's a cavalcade of deep silliness and I'm still laughing.

Prepare for a blast of monochrome nostalgia with the first ever episode, The Man and the Hour. It opens in the "present day" (1968) as the aged members of Walmington on Sea's defunct Home Guard gather to support the economy-boosting I'm Backing Britain campaign.

Then the years roll away and we are at the town's bank at the start of the war with pompous manager Mr Wainwaring (Arthur Lowe) preparing for the Nazi onslaught: "They'll be as dead as mutton from Stead and Simpson's to Timothy White's". He's galvanised by Antony Eden's radio appeal for Local Defence Volunteers, and urges Pike to put the word out that there will be a meeting in the church hall. And so it begins...

Radio Times review

I laughed so helplessly at this episode that I had to re-apply my mascara, and I was still chortling on my way out of the office and on the train home. Count Arthur Strong, half-witted, malapropism-prone former music-hall star (a masterly comic creation by Steve Delaney) joins the modern world at last when his new friend Michael (Rory Kinnear) gets him on the internet. Or on "the Ilfracombe" as the Count has it. Soon his horizons broaden, and not just because "I'm going to tell that Stephen Fry what I think of him".

There's no point in trying to explain further. I will say only that Arthur decides to fulfil his dream of doing Jack the Ripper tours from an ice-cream van complete with chimes.

The final episode of this amiable comedy drama is nicely bittersweet, and we are left with the feeling that life in the Paradise family will continue to be turbulent, long after the credits have rolled. But, though it's been a good-natured six weeks, I'm not sure I want to see any more. Sometimes, you know, things just end and that's fine.

Pauline Paradise (Alison Steadman) continues to carve a new life away from her dull, lugubrious husband Ken (Duncan Preston). He, in turn, decides he must move on and takes steps to get rid of all traces of his estranged wife, which doesn't go down well with the rest of the family. Meanwhile, horrible, self-obsessed Heather confides her big secret in her nearest and dearest. Uh-oh.

As far as I'm aware, just me, my friend Tim and RT's radio editor Jane Anderson are fans of Count Arthur Strong, comedian Steve Delaney's malapropism-prone creation, who's been comfortably berthed on Radio 4 for years. So it's good of Father Ted creator Graham Linehan to bring the Count to TV (as co-writer, with Delaney, and director) just for us.

Strong is an acquired taste, an exquisitely dreadful old fool, a hopeless former self-aggrandising variety show turn with delusions of greatness. He was always a divisive figure on Radio 4, so doubtless he'll split TV audiences, too. But give him a chance, parts of this are really funny. Who can resist nonsense like "She's choking, give her the Heineken manoeuvre!"

Lovely Rory Kinnear provides some sanity as the son of an old friend of the Count's, who's writing his dad's biography.