Dennis Potter

On at the same time as Very Important People was this new documentary about the life of Dad's Army star John Le Mesurier.

In terms of the show's content, it should be pointed out that there's nothing really new or groundbreaking, so if you're a devotee of Le Mesurier then chances are that there will be nothing surprising.

However, if you mainly know him simply as Sgt. Wilson, his appearances alongside Tony Hancock, or his troubled personal life then there's probably some things that might have been new to you. For starters there's the issue of how prolific he was in terms of the number of films he starred in. He did over 100, often just doing a quick cameo role.

One thing that I learnt about him that I never knew previously was that he won a BAFTA award. Not for anything comedic, but for drama, playing in a one-off programme called Traitor by Dennis Potter.

So, for someone mostly unfamiliar with Le Mesurier's background there is much to learn, but if you are an aficionado of his work then this programme's probably not of much use to you.

It's hard for me to be impartial about Psychoville. Shearsmith and Pemberton are about my age and seem to share almost exactly the same frame of cultural reference [...] Ultimately if you don't like this, then there's plenty of other comedy shows on television, although I can guarantee that only one of them will feature an homage to Dennis Potter's Brimstone and Treacle, and it won't be Life of Riley.

Their misadventures are threaded on a string of 50s songs, reminding you along the way how very good Lonnie Donegan was. This is Dennis Potter territory, which makes The Quest seem flimsy.

Goodnight Sweetheart was a slowish starter which is now in its second series and lapping other runners. It owes a certain tender debt to Dennis Potter, the first playwright since Noël Coward to realise how potent cheap music is.

Abigail's Party was horribly funny at times, stunningly acted and perfectly designed, but it sank under its own immense condescension. The force of the yelping derision became a single note of contempt, amplified into a relentless screech. As so often in the minefields of English class-consciousness, more was revealed of the snobbery of the observers rather than the observed.

Wry accounts of a playwright's tribulations are never likely to be popular, especially when there is real hysteria and fear coiled into the repartee. But I am enjoying every minute of it. Charles Wood is a quirkily sardonic writer who is apparently trapped for the moment behind a thorny lattice made out of the loops and whirls of his own words.

Comedian Dave Allen could do with a mouthwash too. His fortnightly Dave Allen at Large (BBC2) is the nearest equivalent yet to the wink and the nudge on the bar-stool, a form of signalling that always makes me look for the nearest exit. He is one of the many comedians on the box who somehow contrive to have more writers on the final credits than jokes in the script.

But what is happening, surely, is that Garnett is gobbling up his own creator, bones, brains, marrow and all. Only Speight's tape-recorder ears are still unchewed. Till Death Us Do Part, partly composed in defiant bravado of the monstrous hordes of prudes and censors, has lurched in ugly staggers from what it began by satirizing into the very thing, the exact process satirized.

Thora Hird and Freddie Frinton are as cunningly professional as any in the trade. And their show Meet the Wife on BBC1 offers us some solid old-fashioned comedy in commendably vigorous style.

Frankie Howerd topped the bill of last night's Palladium Show on ITV - and drew expectant giggles even before he opened his mouth. He is, in fact, the kind of comedian who can make the joke in a cracker seem amusing.