Clive James

'Across the Andes' was the latest instalment of Michael Palin's Ripping Yarns (BBC2). Like previous episodes it sort of half worked. 'Murder at Moorstone House,' the latest yarn but one, was the best to date, but foundered through trying to take 'The Real Inspector Houd' a step too far. Even when the script falters, though, Palin is still funny in himself. He has an eye for the absurdity of traditional British costume. He crossed the Andes in pith helmet, safari jacket, Sam Browne belt, shorts and puttees: a garb as impeccable as it was useless.

Did you know that Toshiro Mifune means 'No smoking' in Japanese? Such jokes are treated as the merest throwaways on The Muppet Show (ATV), which crams more good writing into an episode than the average sitcom can boast in a whole series. 'Sez who?' 'Sez-you-ay Hayakawa,' How can children get a joke like that? Yet even if they don't, they will pretend to. A tot who knows nothing of the tones of voice parodied by Kermit can still understand his problems.

Now that the 'Likely Lads' are off air The Cuckoo Waltz (Granada) is probably the best of the genre currently available. The Hawthornes are ordinary, struggling young marrieds, but they look the picture of health and wouldn't know a class-conflict if they saw it. The plots usually turn on whether it is better to be married, like Chris, or free, like his friend, Gavin. Since Chris's wife, Fliss, iss - sorry - is played by the adorable Diane Keen, it's an academic question.

Robin's Nest (Thames) is along the same lines, except that the young couple run a restaurant and are not married. Since they behave exactly as if they are, the series scarcely deserves its reputation for daring, but let's pretend that everything is as naughty as it should be. [...] Often groan-provoking, it has the occasional stroke of invention to repay your time.

Stanley Baxter's Christmas Box (LWT) fired off some strong material ('Your godmother is a fairy?') before the hero got lost in intimations of Eve Arden and other high-heeled semi-stars of a bygone era. Only the film buffs care about that kind of thing, and how much sense of humour have they got?

Jack Rosenthal's back-to-the-roots play Bar Mitzvah Boy (BBC1) was likewise far from dull, although finally it didn't have the wild suggestiveness of some other Rosenthal inventions. The English Jewish family couldn't help being like a Philip Roth Jewish family, because Jewish culture is international. But [...] you couldn't help feeling you had seen some of this before.

By relative standards, shows like Dad's Army and Porridge are miracles of observation, and even by absolute ones they are astonishingly good: the best of each (and both are getting repeats now on BBC1, thereby providing a feast of viewing) will never look entirely like period pieces, but will always retain their capacity to surprise. Compare the floundering abstractness of 'The Grove Family' to the subtleties of social nuance in 'Dad's Army': it's a clear advance.

Having poured scorn on Benny Hill's self-congratulatory slovenliness in the past, I'm bound to say that The Benny Hill Show (Thames) had its moments, with Hill convulsing himself less often than usual and putting some of the effort saved into diverting his audience. Hill's drag acts are amusing enough in a Dick Emery sort of way, but really his Elizabeth Taylor was a lot less interesting than his Richard Burton - a penetrating effort which showed just how deep Hill could strike if he had a mind to, or had a mind.

In 'Fawlty Towers' humour takes off for the Empyrean from an airstrip firmly constructed in reality. That the wife should possess all the emotional coherence, and the husband be continually falling apart, seems to me not just an elementary role-reversal but a general truth of such power that it is only in comedy you will see it stated.

Ready When You Are, Mr. McGill (Granada), by Jack Rosenthal, was a very funny play about an extra with delusions of competence who was given a line to say and muffed it. As McGill, Joe Black had the unrewarding job of being an invincibly boring little man. He did it well, but perforce yielded the centre of attention to Jack Shepherd, who played the harried film-director. Shepherd's drained anguish has by now become one of the most sought-after acting styles on television - nobody else can do it.