Dave Allen (I)

Golden oldies: Britain's best vintage comedy

The best old sitcoms, stand up and stars of the silver screen are just what the nation needs to get us through these long housebound days - not everything on Netflix is notable, and Amazon Prime is hit and miss. So why not do yourself a favour, and when next looking for something to bring a smile to your face, take a trip back in time to see some of Britain's best comedy.

An evening celebrating the laconic Irish comic begins with this 2014 documentary, which includes fond testimony from family and friends including Steven Berkoff and Dame Maggie Smith. It's followed by last year's biopic Dave Allen at Peace and clip show The Immaculate Selection.

Dave Allen at Peace; Larry Grayson: Shut That Door!

BBC Two remembers Dave Allen in a disappointingly flat biopic, while ITV3 pays homage to the enduringly funny Larry Grayson.

TV review: Dave Allen At Peace, BBC2

An open goal missed by a mile. Watch the documentary instead.

Dave Allen At Peace review

Acting talents aside, you won't learn much about such an important figure in British and Irish comedy from watching this indifferent drama.

Aidan Gillen stars in this thoughtfully constructed biopic of the Irish comedian. It skims swiftly over his celebrity years, though it is interspersed with recreations of some of his sketches and monologues. Instead, it explores the roots of his religious scepticism (sadistic nuns) and his relationships with his father and brother.

Dave Allen at Peace review

Unlike the comedian's monologues, this biopic lacked a punchline or point.

David Tynan O'Mahony, better known as Dave Allen, was never worthy. He spent a professional lifetime mocking the Catholic Church that had made his childhood a misery and, though he was in truth a deeply moral man, always managed to look wickedly louche doing it.

Actor Aidan Gillen captured the rhythms of the great comedian's delivery, if not his voice, in Dave Allen At Peace (BBC2), a drama-documentary that explored how the scars of his schooldays, both physical and emotional, shaped his act.

Allen specialised in long monologues with explosive punchlines. This one-off show tried to imitate that, and found it's much harder than it looks.

After an extended set-up, revealing how wee Davey suffered in school ('No good comes from laughing!' shrieked a nun, clipping him about the ear), there wasn't time to say much about his career. One moment he was setting out with his brother as a double act, then he was a solo star 15 years later, drawing barrowloads of complaints on the BBC.

A minute after that, he was a has-been. Yet a long scene was shoe-horned in, with Allen telling a feeble ghost story -- far from his best material.

It was a mystery, too, why so many of the original sketches were remade shot-for-shot. Surely the Seventies footage would have worked just as well. A wicked disappointment.