Caroline Aherne

The Royle succession

There is an in-joke in Dossa And Joe (BBC2) which makes the heart lurch. Joe is condemned by retirement to listen to the chatter of his wife Dossa and her best friend Vanessa. Vanessa says "Oh, I love the royal family!" "Royal family my arse!" says Joe.

Dad, told her waters had broken, charged upstairs singing The Dambusters, but, as they sat on the floor beside the avocado bath, Ricky Tomlinson and Caroline Aherne went into one of those tender duets which make the humdrum heavenly.

Mrs Merton And Malcolm (BBC1), a spin-off from the gas commercial, is an oddity. The life of Mrs Merton (Caroline Aherne) and Malcolm (Craig Cash) looks like a fifties commercial for Mothers Pride but there is a peculiar undertow of unease. It is Malcolm's 37th birthday, but he and his mother both behave as if he were seven. Sometimes they break into song and dance as women in TV commercials used to do when dusting. These Mrs Merton: The Musical moments are high points, but then everything around seems very flat.

God knows what's wrong with bedridden Mr Merton ('He's fine. I say fine, well, he's still in great pain.') Perhaps he's dead. It's the sort of happy household where sooner or later someone is discovered dead.

Which brings us to the last episode of The Royle Family (BBC2), Denise's wedding. This, like the series itself, was quite unique as nothing whatsoever happened. Unless you count Jim's diarrhoea and Nana's constipation, which cancelled each other out.

I came across the Royles while playing five-finger exercises on the remote control and was instantly transfixed. This is a rivetingly original slice of life, like a bomb-damaged house displaying its vacancy to the world. If it reminds you of anything, it is The Family.

Guests on The Mrs Merton Show (BBC2) are suicidally pleased to meet this sweet old thing in the firmly permed wig. "What first attracted you to the millionaire, Paul Daniels?" she asked Debbie McGee. Her kindly remark to Cynthia Payne "Well, it takes the mind off death," hangs around the brain like mothballs.