Ian La Frenais

For just under two hours this afternoon, BBC Two devotes itself to a celebration of Porridge (the prison-based sitcom, not the breakfast). First up, at 4.20pm, is a repeat of Comedy Connections (Scot, 8.00pm), which traces the genesis of the show and includes contributions from Ronnie Barker, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. It's followed at 4.50pm by Life Beyond the Box (Scot, 4.20pm), a nicely made mockumentary about Norman Stanley Fletcher, the show's central character. Finally, there's a classic episode (Scot, 8.30pm) in which Fletcher and co set up an illicit sweepstake.

Despite the shortcomings in the plot, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet has been the best "new" British drama on TV this year. Its return, whilst critically not quite living up to its previous two series, has still been very welcome indeed.

The big TV event of the week is the return of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet (BBC1), something I'm unqualified to comment on with any degree of authority, having been too young to appreciate the original ITV series, which at the time seemed to consist entirely of slightly frightening men standing in a Portakabin, bellowing at one another in a dialect I didn't understand.

It is well worth a watch. At the worst you learn how to spell Widersehen just as that deplorable business with the Barlows taught us how to spell Dierdre. Hang on, Deirdre. No, I before E except...

'Going Straight' is the worthy successor of 'Porridge.' Norman Fletcher, still played by Ronnie Barker, is out of the nick and cleaving to the straight and narrer. His dialogue, like everybody else's in the show, is still supplied by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. Every line they write is at least twice as good as anything in the average West End play.

And Going Straight always has the copper-bottomed commodiously curved Ronnie Barker, looking like Father Christmas who has come to nick the toys.

For those who already know the Likely Lads, so far the radio version is sticking closely to the television scripts. However, last week when Thelma ends up accidentally in Terry's bed in the radio version it sounded as though she was naked whereas in the television version she wore a discreet petticoat. The best example I have heard of the old saw about preferring radio to television because the scenery is better.

Porridge is not particularly about prison, and if it were it might be distasteful or intolerable. It is about Barker, in shape and content an all-round bad egg, resisting to the last wriggle and wangel and back answer, the pressure of the system. So instinctively awkward that he lies about his height merely to deceive the doctor.

A rock solid script, by Clement and La Frenais. Good comic writing depends on a regular supply of real-life speech patterns - the main reason why success tends to interfere with talent, since it separates the writer from his sources.

I'd like to say, and who shall stop me, how pleasureable the series Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (BBC1) has been. How funny and true. In spite of Keats, funny is the truth and truth is funny and that is all script writers need to know. Or nearly.