Harry Venning

Pity the poor unemployed actor whiling away the afternoon in front of the telly, only to be confronted and tormented by the kind of quality drama he or she cannot find work in.

Normally the daytime schedules comprise of home decoration, self-help, true life confessionals and bargain hunt shows - fodder, basically - but recently the BBC has taken the bold and very welcome decision to introduce original drama to its schedules. Only last week, the excellent Moving On finished its short series of self-contained plays, to be followed by a new comedy drama series, The Indian Doctor.

Set in the South Wales valleys of the early sixties, to a soundtrack of Cliff Richard and Adam Faith, it follows the adventures of the titular doctor and his snooty wife, fresh off the boat from India, having left an opulent lifestyle and a personal tragedy behind them.

Exotic and alien, the couple's arrival in the small mining village provokes a wide range of responses, from obsequiousness, through to bafflement, to outright hostility.

The Indian Doctor is helplessly nostalgic, eminently entertaining and totally unable to resist the temptation to show the glorious countryside it's set among.

Inevitably, it invites comparison with Heartbeat, but there is one major difference between the two shows: The Indian Doctor has racism as an underlying theme, lending it an uncomfortable edge and arresting any potential drift into cosy complacency.

However, while the show acknowledges the inherent racism of the period, it doesn't allow itself to be hijacked entirely by it and even challenges audience expectations. In a particularly neat twist, the doctor's wife is no demure victim, but an outrageous snob, displaying an intolerance of her new neighbours that more than matches their own.

There is a great deal to enjoy about The Indian Doctor - good lines, good characters and a good cast. Taking the title role, with a predictability that would be depressing if his performance weren't so engaging, is Sanjeev Bhaskar.

Sky Arts is doing its bit to promote drama, launching a series of Chekhov Comedy Shorts to celebrate the playwright's 150th anniversary.

The opener, A Reluctant Tragic Hero, sticks Johnny Vegas and Mackenzie Crook in a lavishly dressed but irredeemably stagey drawing room set, where the topic under discussion is domestic purgatory. Well, Vegas not so much discusses as rants, while Crook fills half an hour with an admirably extensive set of facial responses.

While entertaining enough, the play never quite takes off.

Vegas, for all his energy and charisma, never appears comfortable with the text. Also, somebody should have told Chekhov that the play's pay-off gag is a bit on the weak side.

Getting On just keeps getting better. Well into the second series, and the geriatric ward comedy continues to combine Ken Loach style social realism with laugh out loud funny, without compromising either.

There are times when Getting On is so poignant and melancholy that it seems wrong to laugh, but I always do anyway. It is by far the best comedy on TV at the moment, and frequently the best drama as well. And to think I used to believe Jo Brand couldn't act.

The fly-on-the-wall mockumentary has surely run its course, but Trinny and Susannah: From Boom To Bust, succeeded in finding a little life left in the format.

The show followed the celebrated fashion counsellors and bosom gropers as they struggle to arrest a potentially terminal career decline. We witness a lucrative advertising contact fall through, their agent desert them, publicity stunts backfire catastrophically and their appearance at a golf convention fail to generate interest in their anti-fat underwear range.

Vanessa Feltz, David Furnish, Lulu and Prince Edward - I kid you not - are amongst the luminaries featured in supporting roles, but the programme stands or falls on Trinny and Susannah's performances, and they are pitch perfect. The pair pull off the difficult trick of playing the comedy whilst maintaining authenticity, and what could so easily have descended into self-indulgence proved a funny, poignant and strangely moving portrait of friendship in adversity.

Gayle Tuesday makes a welcome return to the screen in Gayle Tuesday: The Comeback. Oh come on, you remember Gayle, the page three stunna and uber-bimbo who graced TV screens back in the nineties?

It was Gayle who memorably introduced the phrase "Oi, tits first! I'm not a slag", to British television.

A decade on we find Gayle, the comic creation of actress Brenda Gilhooly, in denial of middle age and intent upon a return to the world of celebrity.

It is all highly enjoyable and consistently funny, but at an hour in length each episode rather over stretches itself.

Toyah Willcox, Paul O'Grady, Ainsley Harriott, Harry Hill and Heston Blumenthal are among the famous faces sending themselves up, with Toyah winning the acting honours.

This review contains spoilers...

Albert's Memorial was a bodysnatching road movie starring David Jason, David Warner and Michael Jayston as Second World War veterans who, 45 years earlier, had abjectly failed to rescue a young German girl from murderous Soviet troops. When Jayston's character dies, the remaining two must fulfil his dying wish and bury their comrade in the same field outside Berlin where the atrocity occurred.

Which is one hell of a great opening for a drama. Unfortunately, this was one corpse that had been embalmed in saccharin, for the story was soon floundering beneath a wave of sweetness and sentimentality. The jokes were of the "Quiet, you'll wake the dead!" variety, and the plot had holes big enough to drive a hearse and cart through.

My patience finally expired when the mystery hitch-hiker sharing their road to redemption turned out to be the ghost of the murdered German girl.

It is a tribute to the talents of Warner and Jason that they actually succeeded in delivering very moving performances among all the unadulterated tosh.

"You give great blow jobs," announces Steve to his girlfriend Becky, with the opening line of BBC3's new comedy Him & Her. There's nothing quite like setting out your stall.

Him And Her - terrible title, by the way - is a sort of 20-something slacker version of Roger And Val Have Just Got In, except that Steve and Becky never went out in the first place. The story is told in real time, with them slouching around their squalid one-bedroom flat never quite having a proper conversation, never quite having sex and never quite getting properly dressed. They also have on-screen bowel movements, which I believe is something of a first for a British sitcom.

The overall effect is sordid and depressing, albeit frequently alleviated by some very funny, smutty dialogue. Henry Miller meets Max Miller, as it were.

"I'm trying to build a rapport here!" barks Jack (Toby Stephens) at Kate (Lucy Punch) in comedy-drama Vexed. Well let me tell you now, Jack, it's never going to happen.

Stephens and Punch play mismatched police detectives and for the whole of the first episode there wasn't any discernible chemistry, sexual or comic, between them. They drive around a lot, swapping snappy dialogue and engaging in frisson-packed narky exchanges, but for all the good it does their on-screen relationship they may as well have shouted it out of the car window.

It is never helpful to apportion blame, but it's Toby Stephens' fault. He just hasn't the lightness of touch to do this sort of comedy. His character, clearly intended as a cynical, manipulative but loveable charmer, comes over as an unpleasant oaf, pure and simple.

Lucy Punch, however, is as good as Stephens is bad. She makes Kate likeable, vulnerable, funny and very sexy. But even the sharpest flint can't spark off wet wood.

Simon Amstell, type-cast as himself, is the star and co-writer, with Dan Swimer, of Grandma's House. It can best be described as The Royle Family relocated to North London, converted to Judaism and featuring a former host of Never Mind The Buzzcocks amongst its cast of characters. Basically the show comprises of thirty minutes of nagging, whining and kvetching, lapsing into the vernacular between three generations of very extended family.

Mum's odious suitor Clive, a cardboard box salesman obsessed with cooking-times for meat, is thrown in for good measure. The action, such as it is, is mostly located in the living or dining room, although at one point there was a short excursion upstairs to a bedroom.

It may not sound thrilling, but Grandma's House is worth watching for the terrific performances, the gag-packed dialogue that ricochets around the walls, and for a terrific, understated turn from Amstell, providing a calm, snide, cynical centre to the emotional storm.

Pete Versus Life, a study in oafishness and emotional inadequacy among young men, flagrantly trespasses upon Peep Show's territory but provides its own twist. Instead of an internal monologue, the titular hero, a down at heel sports writer, is provided with a pair of studio pundits to provide commentary, backed up with appropriate statistics, upon the embarrassing events in Pete's life as they unfold.

It is an original and clever gimmick, all the more effective for being used sparingly. Pete is winningly played by the terrifyingly versatile Rafe Spall.