Ben Elton

Phoneshop creator Phil Bowker on the art of TV sitcoms

The creator of E4's hit sitcom PhoneShop, Phil Bowker, has spoken to Digital Spy about the secret of his show's success, his contempt for Twitter critics and why he feels sorry for Ben Elton.

If awkwardness were an Olympic event, Arthur Strong would be a gold medallist. The music-hall aficionado staggers around as if glued to an ironing board, and has to forcibly eject words as if passing a kidney stone. Like that other fully realised comic character John Shuttleworth, he polarises opinion, but to his loyal fans the Count is cryingly funny.

There are shades of Hancock this week as our delusional artiste lands a part in a radio play (the way he deflates the pseuds' corner of a read-through is delicious). As in previous weeks, the plot is small but neat. And the modern practice of injecting dramatic heft into sitcom (Tom Hollander in Rev, Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi in Vicious and now Rory Kinnear as Arthur's unfortunate new best friend) is paying rich rewards. The series has been recomissioned after just one episode - take note, Ben Elton. Long live Count Arthur!

I used to enjoy, very much, listening to Count Arthur Strong. But that was when it was on the radio, and I was in the bath. Six-thirty of a pm, the purple glower of dusk, risotto glooping away gently on the stove, and life doesn't get much better than that. I fully appreciate that expectations can vary hugely according to, for instance, personal childcare needs, personal mental health, local proliferation of guns, wholly imagined threat of incipient alien attack, etc. But the programme used to make me smile. Now, instead, it's on my television, and that is, I think, a mistake, and not just because of the cricked neck and spilt Radox as, bath-bound, I crane my head towards the living room.

It wasn't bad. It was co-written by Graham Linehan, of Father Ted fame, which you would expect to have accorded it some comedy chops, and original creator Steve Delaney, who played the titular count, a pompous, bumbling malaprop-trap from Doncaster. The problem was this: it wasn't at all funny. There's recent history here, in the form of executives merely thinking a "name" is enough - in this case, Linehan; a couple of months ago, and in a far, far worse case of unfunny, Ben Elton - to create, as they probably say, albeit with knowing cynicism, comedy gold. In the end, it was just a something about a pompous bumbling man from Donny. Quite why it ever worked on radio I'm now struggling to understand.

Here's a thought. All generalisations are dangerous, even this one, but: few programmes migrate well from radio. There's Have I Got News For You, a spin-off from the (still extant, and wickeder than ever) News Quiz; and Tony Hancock's finest half-hours were actually on the screen. But executive shoes corridor-crunch on the ossified bodies of "hit" shows that died on the transition to screen. Just a Minute became just a dirge. Famously, Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's... was a roiling trough of rhino poop. Not even that lovely Martin Freeman, in the marginally better movie, could pull it off, and the original TV series was a travesty. The phrase "Zaphod Beeblebrox had two heads" works fine-ish as a line in a book, or spoken on the radio (actually it wasn't that funny, ever) - when we can imagine it, in the bath, in the wonder of the mind's eye. On TV, some poor actor was actually given a kind of "ball of saggy painted calico, with eyes" to waggle on his shoulders as a second head. It's the difference between having to show it, and trusting the listener/reader to, basically, "insert image here": and, incidentally, the reason why Lucky Jim, the funniest book of the 20th century, has never been filmed, other than execrably. Surreality, wordplay and extended interior monologues would seem particularly vulnerable to becoming lost in transition: but I don't know quite why I'm banging on about things that don't work on TV, when there were so many last week that did. It's just that I... well, I quite liked lying in the bath. Imagining.

Wright Way goes wrong: how social media is changing TV

As Ben Elton and Peter Kay feel the heat of Twitter's critics and communal viewing makes a comeback, Mark Lawson asks if broadcasters are running scared.

It seems aeons ago now, but Ben Elton's Young Ones once featured its own spoof ITV sitcom-within-a-sitcom called Oh Crikey, a typical "Oops, where's me trousers" farce. So it's while gazing slack-jawed at The Wright Way that you appreciate just what a journey its creator has been on, from there to here. In tonight's final episode (fingers crossed), Gerald writes F.A.N.N.I.E.S on a whiteboard, Ade Edmondson's daughter spouts more stunningly unfunny patois, and a nation roars in unison: "Your name's Ben Elton - goodnight!"

Beeb is ready to chop Ben Elton's sitcom flop

After being slated as TV's worst-ever sitcom, I hear Ben Elton's disastrous comedy The Wright Way is set to be quietly forgotten.

I had managed to resist the allure of The Wright Way up until this week. If you watched the Ricky Gervais sitcom Extras, you would understand what I mean when I say that The Wright Way is a real world When The Whistle Blows. It is completely, and I mean completely, unredeemable in every conceivable way.

I know that Ben Elton is an easy and popular target nowadays, but let's face it; if this is what he is producing then he kind of deserves it. Perhaps ironically, The Wright Way does everything wrong that it possibly could. The writing is just horrible. Horrible to the point I was physically wincing every couple of minutes. There was even some 'yoot speak' in there this week. Every joke (and I use the term very loosely) was signposted from eight miles off, and almost exclusively unfunny.

The characters are neither believable nor wacky enough to be anything of interest, and the lines are delivered in an off-putting pantomime-style shout which makes the performances stilted to the point of being almost unwatchable.

I spoke last week about not really getting the 'live audience' set up, but that doesn't always mean the death of a show. However, the laughter track on this only highlighted more the complete absence of my laughter. I like to think that I go into things with an open mind, happy to have my predictions shattered, but watching a second episode of this would be tantamount to emotional self immolation.

If you have any love in your heart for the Elton of old, the one who brought us Blackadder and The Young Ones, then I implore you: do not watch this show. Also burn any copies of the Radio Times which list it. And your TiVo box, in case it accidentally records it.

Opinion: The Wright Way - A very, very slight defence

Let's get one thing straight. I'm certainly not backtracking on my opinion of Ben Elton's pitiful sitcom. But at the same time I've found some of the objections to The Wright Way particularly interesting. Maybe it's the rise of Twitter and Facebook, maybe it's just my friends being too choosy, but what it has highlighted in a way I've never noticed to this extent before, is the snobbery about British sitcoms.

How did Ben Elton's 'The Wright Way' get it so wrong?

The old comedy adage says that if there's nothing funny left to say, make a penis joke. Perhaps this explains why The Wright Way is just one big knob gag, then.

Once upon a time, Ben Elton wrote sharp, funny comedy that aimed for a mass audience yet didn't seem to care too much if it was too close to the knuckle for the great British public. But that was a while back. Now, sadly, the health-and-safety-culture-spoofing The Wright Way, which this week finds Gerald trying to prove that playing conkers is dangerous, merely seems rather dated. Quite remarkably, it also proves that, yes, you can try to squeeze too many cock and humping jokes into 30 minutes.