Bobby Ball

A suburban tale evidently shooting for a Desperate Housewives-style comedy-drama angle, Mount Pleasant seems to have decided that comedy is what you create when you combine the cliche with the offensive. Even Sky's habit of throwing money at the problem can't make things right, as a fine cast of well-liked British actors (Angela Griffin, Sally Lindsay, Bobby Ball - the only good element here) try to lift the diabolical material. And the whole thing is made still worse by jarring shifts in tone.

The sight of Bianca (Sian Reeves playing yet another over-the-top maneater like in Cutting It and Emmerdale) ­highlights the obvious ingredients chucked into this new sitcom.

And that's before we meet Sue (Pauline Collins) who arrives with a cry of "Only me!" and Barry (Bobby Ball).

On the other hand, it's a cut above Candy Cabs, filmed nearby, although that's not saying much.

For Mount Pleasant, read upmarket Hale in Cheshire, home to Lisa and husband Dan - played by Sally Lindsay and Daniel Ryan.

In the first instalment, Lisa fears Dan has forgotten their 10th anniversary and fumes when gorgeous boss/friend (Angela Griffin) moves in and goes about dressed like she's doing a cover shoot for Nuts

The cast also includes Liza Tarbuck and Ainsley Howard and you get a vision of the casting director throwing a big net into a pool marked: The Usual Suspects.

So bad, it has to be seen to be believed. Only don't see it, because it is so bad that seeing it would make you angry. So believe us, it's bad, not that you can believe how bad it is without seeing it, unless you've got a really good imagination about bad comedy dramas on TV. And even if you were on an Alistair Cook like streak of imagining terrible drama, you'd probably still not quite manage to think of how bad this is.

It's a battle of the sexes set in suburban Manchester that wants to be Cold Feet meets Desperate Housewives. And watching it will certainly leave the viewer cold and desperate (if you think that's a weak joke, then watch the show and come back to us).

The acting isn't too awful - well, it is but you're aware throughout that it's eminently possible that Angela Griffin, Sally Lindsay, Bobby Ball and Liza Tarbuck could make a decent show (actually, not Tarbuck). The script, however, doesn't just mock their efforts, it takes a show to Edinburgh about their efforts, comes back down and then punches them in the face.

Seriously, it's bad. Believe us.

If anything was going to put you off your Ferrero Rochers over Christmas, it had to be The Fattest Man in Britain, ITV's comedy drama about a man in an orthopaedic armchair eating himself to merry hell. Timothy Spall looked dangerously at home in the title role as Georgie, with comedian Bobby Ball admirably cast as his "manager", Morris, turning up with a cabful of Japanese tourists eager to take pictures and lay their hands on the big man's folds. "I would ask you to respect Georgie's private zones," said Morris (though, frankly, you imagined these people might get enough blubber at home). Frances Barber completed the homely trio as Janice, who came in every day to shovel Georgie's meals together and grease his legs, which was as attractive as it sounds.

With Caroline Aherne co-scripting, there was as much pleasing northern drollery as you'd expect amid the ill-lit claustrophobic clutter and junk food and trash TV familiar from The Royle Family, though admittedly the oxygen tank looked ominous.

Things took a turn when a crew of youths was sent by the social services to tidy the garden and Amy - a pregnant teenager on the run from a violent boyfriend - ended up moving in. Aisling Loftus was excellent as the underfed, beaten waif looking for a father figure and finding it in kindly Georgie. There was a worrying moment, in his late mother's bedroom, when you wondered what kind of a comedy this was turning into... but no, Amy was soon settling in, cooking and tidying up, nibbling a dark chocolate Magnum with Georgie (not the classiest of product endorsements), helping Janice with his pig-sized legs and restyling his terrible 80s mullet - an early clue that he hadn't been out in 23 years. That's how long it had been since his mum died. "It's like I was eating for her," Georgie confided. "Like there was an angel on my fork."

All was well until a rival barrage balloon from Birmingham challenged Georgie to a TV weigh-in and Morris - aided by locals arriving with mountains of pizza and bakewell tarts - set to bulking him up for the contest. Amy - now almost as big as Georgie (well, not quite, but who remembered she was even pregnant?) - railed against the freak show that would surely kill him.

Events were channelled into a poignant denouement, but when the baby died and Amy called it a day with Georgie, it didn't feel like tragedy. Even when Georgie rose from his chair and struggled down the street to see her, it was more Love Actually than love. There was a late attempt at profundity with a short disquisition about the desire to make failure look like success. "If I'm not the fattest man in Britain, what am I?" cried Georgie. "I'm just a fat man!" It was a great line, but it just made me think that inside this broadly entertaining drama was a sharper, less funny one trying to get out.

Lee Mack: Bobby Ball is my comedy father

Lee says: "The first thing I can remember as a sort of performance was doing Bobby Ball impressions in the playground at school."

Held over from the end of the last series, back at the start of the year, this festively themed episode of Lee Mack's likeably daft sitcom (we demand more, by the way) features Bobby Ball as Lee's estranged dad. Although this man walked out on his family when his son was only four, Lucy (Sally Bretton) thinks her flatmate should forgive and forget.

From the title, you'd expect it to be a channel Five documentary, but The Fattest Man in Britain (ITV1, Sunday) is actually a drama, co-written by Caroline Aherne. Timothy Spall, looking quite at home in a fat suit, plays Georgie, a good-natured human bouncy castle in Rochdale. But the star is Bobby Ball, who plays Maurice, his agent. Maurice takes foreigners on guided tours of Georgie, for £11.50. It's in his interest to keep Georgie as big as possible. So he feeds him up, like a goose, for foie gras.

Some of the dialogue has a nice, natural Royle Family feel to it. But it's a bit silly really. And as sugary as one of the pop tarts Georgie keeps popping. "That's why this title is so important to me, Amy," he says to the nice girl who's come to live with him. "The Fattest Man in Britain. Because if I'm not the fattest, I'm just a fat man. Just a big fat man sat in his chair."

"You've already got a title Georgie: you're My Friend."

Pass the sick bag will you. And give that man a gastric band.

The Fattest Man in Britain looked as if it was going to be filed under Northern Grotesque. You had Bobby Ball in a cab promising his excited Japanese passengers "the eighth wonder of the world". And then you saw Georgie's pudgy hand reaching for the aftershave bottle and splashing it on underneath a bingo wing the size of a sofa cushion. When Timothy Spall, just visible inside his fat suit, began singing "Turning Japanese", complete with slitty-eye gestures, for his paying guests it looked as if we were in for an exercise of gleeful bad taste. In fact, Caroline Aherne's drama (co-written with producer Jeff Pope) turned out to be a lot sweeter and life-affirming than you might have expected, contriving a Beauty and the Beast relationship between Georgie and Amy, the community-service girl who came to clear his garden. For her, he was the dad she's never had; for him, she was the first person to care for him who didn't have an interest in him getting bigger. Although he was initially devastated by the realisation that he had a heavier rival ("If I'm not the fattest, what am I, eh? I'm just a fat man") he finally struggled out of his chair and slimmed down to win her back. I wasn't entirely convinced that it would have been as easy as it was made to look, but very happy to pretend while it lasted.

If you're worried about gaining the odd pound over the next few days, this should put things into perspective. It's a great, wobbling tale of a Rochdale man who's so obese he becomes a tourist attraction. Timothy Spall plays warm-hearted giant Georgie Godwin; his agent Maurice (Bobby Ball at his most terrifying) charges foreign tourists to line up in Georgie's front room and hear him sing bad karaoke.

The script is co-written by Caroline Aherne and has her characteristic mix of broad comedy larded with touching moments. The opening scenes rely heavily on caricatures, but stick around and things warm up. Music by Badly Drawn Boy leans the whole thing a poignancy the script doesn't always manage, but by the end you're left with the lingering feeling that you've seen a modern fable.