Carla Lane

The Liver Birds (BBC1) by Carla Lane, returning after more than 20 years, looks promising and the most promising thing was Beryl's passionate tears when she was alone at the end. It is not like Beryl to cry. She had told Sandra she had no children, but she has a brutishly vacant son in Borstal. "You're spoiling my life" she whispered, but he was wearing his personal stereo and didn't hear her.

Searching turned up on ITV at half past nine, and in a rare insight into the tricks of my trade, I am willing to disclose that for the first time in my reviewing life, I made no notes, being transfixed by Searching's weird emptiness, not to mention its wilful absence of jokes.

Prunella Scales presides over a bunch of misfits who seem permanently to inhabit her living room. Most have had bad experiences with men, which is par for the Lane course, though this does not stop them ogling the visiting male therapist. The writing is often sharp but the direction of the show is so far unclear.

The first series was thin on jokes and heavy on everything else - a bit like EastEnders without the jaunty title music.

Shakespeare reworked familiar themes with ingenuity. So did Milton. For all her proven talent, Carla Lane does not seem quite to have managed it with her new BBC1 comedy series Luv, which began last night. It could have been made 20 years ago. If Luv is supposed to be a subtle part of the 1970s revival, it is too subtle.

Carla Lane's new series, Luv (BBC1) has a family resemblance to her old series, Bread. But at least it's a different script. Unlike the Boswells, a cheerful burden on the welfare state, Harold Craven (Michael Angelis) is a self-made man. His plastic plant pots seem to be doing amazingly well in the recession.

Top comedy writer Carla Lane has had to scrap her latest sitcom Screaming because one of the show's stars refused to act in front of a studio audience. Carla, creator of hit shows Bread, Butterflies and The Liver Birds, said that actress Penelope Wilton's decision to quit had left her "devastated".

Experienced telly watchers are well aware that what we see on the box is usually unrelated to real life. But this series, in which three mature and apparently sensible women are so easily reduced to quivering mounds of emotional jelly by the same no-good creep, stretched the imagination to breaking point.

If Carla's man-mad whiners were out scouring the streets for the randy rotter waving castrating shears, I might understand them. But no, they just drivelled on about how unfair it all is. About the only reason to catch a moment more is to see if Ralph comes back to bonk. And whom? And where he's been meanwhile. With Ma Boswell? Or perhaps Wendy Craig.

Most people may live lives of quiet desperation but not Carla Lane. Desperate, yes. Quiet, no. Her comedies are often just this side of screaming. Hence, no doubt, Screaming (BBC1). There is, however, a blessed bounce about it like someone playing squash in your sitting-room. And it has Gwen Taylor.