David Renwick

In an hour, they packed in Ruby Wax's RSC reminiscences (she couldn't master the wench accent), a tribute to Richard Beckinsale, Neil Innes on Rutland Weekend TV (surely worth a repeat), a little bit about the over-rated Adrian Mole, Alan Carr's guide to Northampton, David Baddiel going back to school, Mel and Sue in Oxford, David Renwick's life on the Luton News and the evolution of Spitting Image. Great value for money!

The first series of David Renwick's Love Soup spent six hour-long episodes following two people who were clearly perfect for each other - but who, teasingly enough, never met. Three years later, series two has now turned up with some bad news for romantics. Far from getting together with Alice (Tamsin Greig), Gil (Michael Landers) has disappeared from the scene completely.

So it is that the show has become largely a one-hander - and, with 30-minute episodes this time, more of a conventional sitcom. Renwick does his usual professional job with the script, and Greig is as good as ever at registering various shades of disappointment. Yet, Saturday's programme, while charming, never really took off.

For one thing, when the chips were down, the professionalism frequently turned into straight sitcom contrivance. For another, some of Renwick's targets felt rather old-hat - such as his satirical observation that the portions of food in nouvelle cuisine are very small.

Most importantly, though, he seems far too much in love with Alice himself. In the first series Gil's job as a TV scriptwriter meant that Renwick could always add a bit of edge by attacking modern television. Without that, and with Alice remaining so utterly lovely, the tone is often surprisingly soppy.

Observer Review

David Renwick gets the tricky balance of light and shade, comedy and drama, potential romance and its itchy underbelly absolutely right.

Yet even in this age of Midsomer Murders, 24 and Messiah, nine million people still seem to love Jonathan, and given his steady ratings performance this time out (thrashing Chris Evans' rusty Boys and Girls) the series now seems destined to pass into Only Fools and Horses-style BBC heritage.

In the final analysis, this obviously wasn't the best episode of One Foot In The Grave ever - nor even of this series. But how can we really be well disposed towards the episode that ends it all anyway? With a macabre final twist (cf Jonathan Creek again) and a very affecting pastoral shot over the end credits, this was still superior stuff.

In an evening where Jim Davidson sings Boyzone (cf. The Generation Game) Jonathan Creek is something of a peculiarity - an imaginative, quirky, witty piece which successfully targets the family audience without gunging them.

One Foot In The Grave (BBC1) by David Renwick is a good little situation comedy chiefly because of the seething Richard Wilson and his ill-fitting skin: "Hang on! My skin's coming loose! My arm looks like it's wrapped in Clingfilm." The flesh may be sagging, but the spirit is up and sparring.

Being on BBC2 Alexei Sayle's Stuff is more cerebral or something. It is intellectual yet bonkers, like a fast journey down a stream of consciousness on a rubber duck.

A fascinatingly recurrent phenomenon, newspaper proprietors: when you think they are extinct they appear again like Gorgosaurus with extra knobs on. The jolliest item of the weekend was the return of Hot Metal (LWT) by Marshall and Renwick.