Andrew Sachs

Rory Bremner lampoons Russell Brand

Rory Bremner becomes Russell Brand, cheekily grinning by a microphone and looking uncannily like the long-haired comedian as he made his prank calls to Andrew Sachs, in his new show.

It may have only been 12 episodes, but more than 30 years after its debut Fawlty Towers remains one of our favourite sitcoms. This documentary looks at how the show came into being and why it turned out a classic. Michael Palin suggests it's survived because its "precision comedy" and Basil Fawlty's hysterical character were a symptom of the times. Not everyone was enamoured with it though - a BBC executive described it as "dire". Cast members John Cleese, Connie Booth, Andrew Sachs and Prunella Scales all contribute their recollections of making the programme.

Andrew Sachs Interview

Andrew Sachs answers various questions about the show.

This joyous look back at John Cleese's benchmark sitcom delivers everything you could hope for. For the first time, Cleese, ex-wife Connie Booth, screen wife Prunella Scales and Andrew Sachs, together with producer-director John Howard Davies, re-call how the shows came about.

Cleese's anecdotes about the Torbay hotelier who inspired the monstrous Basil are as funny as the gold-plated clips. And that's saying something, since Fawlty Towers' slapstick violence has tremendous impact in short bursts.

Add interviews with many of the sitcom's guest stars, including Bernard Cribbins, Una Stubbs, Geoffrey Palmer and David Kelly and you have real depth and detail. If only the start of each section wasn't delayed by unnecessary come-ons, it would be the perfect documentary for the perfect sitcom.

It's been a terrible week for popular, wild-haired comedian Russell Brand. After he and Jonathan Ross left lewd messages on actor Andrew Sachs' voicemail during a Radio 2 show, more than 18,000 complaints pushed him into parting company with the BBC.

Inevitably, the tabloid furore over 'Sachsgate' boosted the return of Russell Brand's Ponderland to 1 million viewers for the start of its second series.

Besides a better set, the bedrock of Ponderland's format remained the same: Brand introduces a funny clip from the TV archives, the footage is played to a live studio audience, and Brand finally dissects the clip by spinning it into a meandering, surreal few minutes of iffy stand-up. Some of it works, most of it doesn't. I've always found Brand an odd TV presence (his shark's grin, his big hair, those tight trousers), and much prefer his anarchic, playful radio persona without that visual distraction. It's just an ironic pity radio gave him enough rope to hang himself with, isn't it.

Given that it contained two of my favourite phenomena, namely Russell Brand and psychic cats, it's odd to report that Russell Brand's Ponderland only fitfully tickled my whiskers.

Maybe it was because the peerless Harry Hill's TV Burp does the clip'n'mix style of comedy so well or maybe Brand was fitting in between Hollywood movies, pestering Andrew Sachs and resigning from the BBC (my nomination for non-scandal of the year) but there were times when his bestial riffing - his subject was pets - felt a tad forced.

Still, even when Brand is only purring on low gas he's still worth a sniff, ripping ribald laughs out of a scary woman who'd become rather too fond of her dog and a suicide pact involving a parrot. But for every good gag there was one he should have dumped in the litter tray.

At least Channel 4 still loves Russell Brand. The comedian, who quit the BBC yesterday over his 'prank' calls to actor Andrew Sachs, opens his new C4 series of eccentric rants with the subject of pets. It's a rich topic which allows him to weave together gleefully dirty stories about our unnaturally intense relationships with animals. Showing he's not entirely a reformed character, Brand shares a distressing but amusing tale of a woman who had an affair with her dog. Irreverent, witty and packed with imagination, Ponderland shows how good Brand is when he reins in his most childish excesses.