Bruce Mackinnon

With Britney Spears and Take That going down the circus route for their recent albums, suddenly the big top's back in vogue. But even if it didn't feature Ruth Madoc as one half of a dog act (the other half being a West Highland terrier called Dave) the ghost of Hi-de-Hi! hovers over this show.

Like holiday camps, a circus - where this is set - is like a sheltered environment where all kinds of eccentrics can live in safety, at arms' length from the outside world. The genial folk at Maestros appear to have been preserved in aspic from some time in the 60s and their biggest star seems to be Amanda Holden in a ringmaster's outfit.

Also on the bill are Tony Robinson as a grumpy caretaker named Erasmus, leotard-wearing Boyco, (Bruce MacKinnon) and John Thomson and Sophie Thompson (not related) as a pair of clowns, Jeff and Helen.

The gentle comedy tonight revolves around some ferrets down a clown's trousers and a visit from a health and safety officer - who's played by a seriously bemused-looking Patrick Baladi.

Even if the comedy here was always too broad to cut it with the best of satire, the series ends very much as it began - with a gentle burbling of in-jokes and good humour. The BBC's senior foreign correspondent has begun to suffer from such chronic sexual frustration that he is displaying symptoms of dementia. In desperation he rings up Jennie Bond - playing herself - in the hope that they could "do things" together. "I've said it to John Humphrys," she replies, "and I say it to you. NO!" This final episode also represents the triumph of the underdog, as Harry the hapless stringer (Bruce Mackinnon) finally shows a glimmer of talent. At the very least, this was a better class of light entertainment.

The satire that pokes fun at the competitive world of war reporting continues with the BBC's junior stringer, Harry (Bruce Mackinnon), facing his toughest assignment to date: a rendezvous with his girlfriend's fiercely intimidating father. Elsewhere, David (Martin Jarvis), the bumptious chief foreign editor, learns that if he doesn't file an exclusive pronto, he will have to return home to work on the apparently much-maligned breakfast show.

This new comedy series was co-created by a journalist, co-filmed by a cameraman who's won RTS awards for reporting - and viewers may notice more than a little of foreign affairs editor John Simpson in fictional correspondent David Bradburn (played by Martin Jarvis). When war breaks out in the fictional African country of Karibu, where the child soldiers play football with Kalashnikovs for goalposts, the first BBC news television crew arrives, it seems, within minutes. The BBC's local stringer, Harry Chambers (Bruce Mackinnon), think he's about to win his first news scoop, but is promptly gazumped by his senior colleague, Bradburn, who flies into town and files his first flak-jacketed piece to camera without a jot of Karibu knowledge in his head. There's an over-reliance on fart jokes and Carry On farce here - at one point a dog is blown up by a land mine, splattering Chambers in "comedy" blood. The show bares its satirical teeth, though, in the plausible way it sends up the BBC news game's preening hierarchy. The reporters all clamour for precious minutes on "The One", "The Six" or "The Ten". Suddenly, the satire starts to ring true. It's just strange that a spoof of war reporting didn't want to take itself, well, a little more seriously.

This could be Drop The Dead Donkey on location as we fly out with the BBC's foreign news pack to report on the strife-ridden African country of Karibu. "It wouldn't take much to make a difference here," junior reporter Harry Chambers (Bruce Mackinnon) explains. "A visit by Angelina Jolie or Fearne Cotton. Perhaps even a one-off drama by Richard Curtis."

A commissioning editor would green-light the script on the strength of that line alone. As the BBC's big guns fly to Karibu to steal Harry's thunder, the laughs come as much from the characters as the situation - like the mumsy World Service lady who compares Africa's roads with pot-holes in Putney.

But the best gags come from TV Centre back in London where producer Nigel (Mackenzie Crook) is busy making Daleks out of his used coffee cups.