Ben Elton

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.

I don't know who it is who makes up the studio audiences for sitcoms or what they're injected with before the recording begins, but, as Ben Elton's The Wright Way demonstrated last week, there is virtually nothing that they won't laugh at. Like laboratory animals trained to respond to some arbitrary stimulus, they react to anything that is even vaguely punch-line shaped. This turns out to be quite handy in Vicious, which is full of lines that have the cadence of comedy but often prove to be devoid of wit when examined more closely.

Or to employ a wit so dubious that an appalled silence might be a more reasonable response. An example: "You let a complete stranger use your loo?" says Frances de la Tour's character when she discovers that Freddie and Stuart's lavatory is occupied. "What if he comes out and rapes me?" Gales... no... tornadoes of laughter.

The basic schtick in Vicious is high-camp bitchiness, a form that reached an apogee in the American sitcom Will & Grace (on which Gary Janetti also worked). This is a sadly depleted version, though, and it's delivered by McKellen and Jacobi as if they're playing in Wembley Stadium and only the upper tiers are occupied, with a heavily semaphored effeminacy that seems to belong to an entirely different era.

That is partly the point, of course - they're supposed to be social fossils - but unfortunately nothing else in Vicious provides a believable backdrop for their self-dramatisations, from the inexplicable eagerness of the young straight neighbour to insert himself into their lives, to the jerky clockwork of the plot. Only Marcia Warren comes out of it with her dignity intact, as an absent-minded friend. Seems almost blasphemous to say it but McKellen and Jacobi should watch her and take some notes on comic acting.

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.

Ben Elton: ex-darling of the Left who can do no right

Artsy liberals are determined not to laugh at their old hero Ben Elton's new sitcom The Wright Way.

I don't know what I was doing in 1995, apart from watching a lot less telly than I do now. Ben Elton at that time was sending himself up. One sketch parodying his oh so right-on image had him chasing Page 3 models round a park to reprimand them and tricking heterosexual couples into becoming gay. And did that stem the sneers? Not really, and then he gave his critics more ammo by selling out to the West End and its Tory-supporting high priests. Thus, The Wright Way is his first sitcom in 11 years.

A soft target Elton may be, but some things have simply got to be done: this is dire. Jokes from the 70s. Jokes suggesting The Wright Way might therefore be ironic (it's not; just dire). Slapstick involving hand-dryers. Knob jokes. Jokes about speed-bumps (the "hero" is a health and safety officer). Jokes about how long women spend in the bathroom. Jokes about the M25. Jokes which end: "...the same excuse the Nazis tried". Unbelievably, the studio audience laugh. That free wine must have been very good.

New BBC comedy by Ben Elton is the worst sitcom ever

Everything is diabolical. From so-called jokes about women taking forever in the bathroom, to the word "erection".

Somewhere out there in this mad world, where Uruguayans bite Serbians and we are all travelling to hell in a handcart, there are presumably many people who find sitcoms like The Wright Way funny. It's hard to believe, but we have little choice, because the alternative explanation for the existence of Ben Elton's ranty new show is that the BBC knew it was a mirthless dog and still commissioned it on the strength of Elton's name. Either way, you have to laugh, or else you'd cry.

The saying goes that if you've got nothing good to say, say nothing at all. So when it comes to Ben Elton's new BBC sitcom The Wright Way, my review is as follows.

That is all.