Ian Wolf

Sky's been on a bit of a role in terms of comedy commissions. While most of the notable ones have been on Sky1 and Sky Atlantic, other channels have been making their own shows, with this one coming from Sky Arts 1.

A Young Doctor's Notebook is based on a collection of short stories made by the Soviet novelist Mikhail Bulgakov, most famous for his book The Master and Margarita. The story's told via extracts from an old doctor in 1930s Moscow (played by Mad Men star Jon Hamm), about his experiences working in tiny village hospital in the middle of nowhere just after his graduation in 1917 (his younger self being played by Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame).

The opening story see the young doctor arrive at his new practice and dealing with his much more experience staff: Anna (Vicki Pepperdine), a midwife who is obsessed with the doctor's late predecessor Leopold Leopoldovich; fellow midwife Pelageya (Rosie Cavaliero) and the boring feldsher (Adam Godley). As the story goes on, the young doctor finds himself mysteriously in conflict with his older self, who keeps telling him what to do.

This opening episode was highly enjoyable. I've read some of Bulgakov's work before (i.e. Heart of a Dog) so I know a bit about his life and the book's in some ways based on his own experiences as a doctor in the Russian countryside. It does make you wonder exactly how much of it's based on stuff which occurred to him as there's quite a lot of gore. One of the most horrific yet funny scenes involves the young doctor trying to extract a tooth from a patient, which first leads him to drag the patient around the floor, before doing something I don't think it would be wise to mention now.

It's not just the slapstick which is good, but the characters too, especially the staff the doctor has to work with. The feldsher for example makes a study of how many things you can possibly fit into the young doctor's luggage (he counts socks individually).

Many people will be watching A Young Doctor's Notebook just to see the high-profile leads, but there's much more to this programme than just the cast.

Gigglebox weekly #66: Peep Show, John Bishop's Big Year

This week Ian Wolf witnesses a microwave being destroyed and a programme that's a month too early.

This is a new series covering everything that's been going on in 2012 starring John Bishop. Well, I say new. This series appears to be John Bishop's Britain remarketed.

Like its predecessor, Bishop covers a range of different topics using both stand-up and sketches. However, this time around the sketches are all performed by the sketch trope Pappy's, and there are no pre-filmed segments with celebrities or members of the public.

I must say that this worked rather well for most of the time. I especially liked the opening sketch about the Greek economy, which featured two Greek men trying to mend their broken plates to save money. However, I was annoyed by the pasty tax sketch which featured another lazy John Prescott gag. You'd think we've moved on from such a basic gag, or at least changed that target to someone more current (no doubt that would be Eric Pickles)...

However, there's one problem I do have with this programme and all programmes of this type, really. Namely it doesn't cover all of the year. Bishop's show aired in November, which is just ridiculous. I don't want to sound like someone from the Daily Mail, but these review programmes just seem to keep coming around earlier every year. It's just not right...

I think the best way to start the review of this programme is with the following statement: Peep Show is better than Father Ted.

I know that according to Channel 4's Greatest Comedy Show Father Ted's is better, but it's wrong. It's merely more popular. Peep Show's funnier because of the writing, the plot devices, the innovative camera work, the quality of the performances and the darkness of the humour and characters. Peep Show may never have attracted more than 2 million viewers for a single episode, but the quality of it stands.

Peep Show returned with its usual mix of darkness and desperation, thanks to the struggling lives of flatmates Mark and Jez (David Mitchell and Robert Webb). At the start of this series, Mark is trying to get Jez out of the flat so his love Dobby (Isy Suttie) can move in. Mark's plans are so desperate; he even thinks breaking Dobby's microwave will help. Also, Mark gets a job tip from - of all people - Super Hans (Matt King), Jez decides to undergo therapy, and the health of Mark's love rival Gerrard (Jim Howick) takes a turn for the worse.

There's so much to like in this opening episode, including Jez's somewhat paranoid display when he attends his therapy session, to the horrifying consequences which result when Mark tries to prevent Isy from seeing Gerrard. One interesting plot device which seems to be sprouting is Jeff (Neil Fitzmaurice), now living with Sophie (Olivia Colman), getting a bit too close to Mark's baby son Ian for his liking...

It's not often that a TV comedy comes along that's geared towards older viewers, but Last Tango in Halifax's such a show - and it's surprisingly good.

Set in Yorkshire, the story follows two OAPs, Celia and Alan (Anne Reid and Derek Jacobi) who used to be close school-friends, but drifted apart after school, got married to different people and ended up widowed. The two then rediscovered each other on Facebook and arrange to meet up for the first time in 60 years.

Last Tango in Halifax's a comedy drama so don't expect it to be laugh a minute, because it isn't. However, what it lacks for in jokes it makes up for in surprise. The first episode, for example, sees (amongst other things) a boy getting seriously injured after falling off his motorbike and a mother accused of killing her husband.

The main plus point for Last Tango in Halifax, though, is that while you think that it's going to be very predictable, it turns out be more complicated than you think. For example, I knew that one of the characters in the show was bisexual. In the first scene one of Celia's grandsons is reading Anthony and Cleopatra and I thought, "Oh, don't tell me they made the intellectual bookworm the bisexual one, with some gushing coming out scene to his headmistress mother." But no, it turns out that the bisexual one is in fact the said headmistress mother Caroline (Sarah Lancashire), so I was certainly taken aback by that.

The other falsely-predictable moment occurs when Alan parks his car up in a car park before meeting Celia. He doesn't buy a ticket to use the car park and just walks away, leading me to think, "Oh, don't tell me that he and Celia are going to go back to the car, only to find being in the middle of being towed away or clamped." Again, I was wrong. Instead he goes back to buy the ticket, and finds some smashed up glass where his car was, as it's stolen. This in turn leads to the funniest sequence in the opening episode, where in Celia's car they discover Alan's stolen car being driven and the two go in hot pursuit of it across Skipton.

While I wasn't expecting much, it turns out that this has been a rather charming, warm, surprising programme. Certainly worth watching, considering the plot developments that occur at the end of the first episode.

Dr. Brown is the professionally trained silent clown persona of the American comic Phil Burgers, and the winner of this year's Edinburgh Comedy Award. This week he was the first star of Channel 4's replacement to the Comedy Showcase - the 4Funnies. However, it doesn't seem that the talents that won him that most sort-after of stand-up prizes have made it onto the screen.

Dr. Brown featured various sketch ideas and characters, many of which repeated throughout the show. For me, it's always a problem for any sketch show, because if you don't like the sketch the first time then the chances are you won't like it on repeat viewing.

And sadly, that was the case here too. The only recurring sketch that did make me laugh eventually was that of a jogger going seemingly mad, pouring tonnes of protein and energy powders into his mouth. The funniest sketch was a simple one off, where a character puts sheets of toilet paper on a loo set before using it, before eventually decide to lift up said use it and sit in just the bowl.

I think the problem here is that Dr. Brown is a silent act. These sorts of sketches aren't exactly what I was expecting from him, and I thought the humour would be more visual that it actually was. It may be the case that sketch comedy isn't the right format for this performer and a stand-up TV show would be a better outlet...

Arguably the most successful stand-up show on British TV has returned for its eighth series on BBC One, and not much has changed.

This opening episode featured Dara O'Briain as the headline act, mostly talking about stupid things people do in their holidays, including his own experience at trying to surf in Australia. Guest Danny Bhoy also talked a lot about Australia, as well as the problems Scotland might have if they get into the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. However, the best act on the night for me was ventriloquist Nina Conti, who did a brilliant improvisation act which involved getting two members of the audience on stage and making them wear fake mouths which she controlled, turning the pair into life-sized dummies.

Live at the Apollo demonstrates some of the great comic talents that are out there, but once again the show still has the problems. Firstly is the length of the show. It used to be 45 minutes, now it's 30 minutes. Admittedly there are extended repeats, but for the last series they didn't appear until months later. Personally I think they should scrap the 30 minute format and just have the straight 45 minutes.

The other, bigger complaint Live at the Apollo gets is the lack of diversity among the comics chosen. The main one is the lack of women. Other than Conti the only other women appearing are Kerry Godliman and Sara Pascoe. Now given that Conti, who is both a woman and the first ventriloquist to appear on the programme, was the funniest person on in the latest episode, I think that's proof that a bigger range of performers could do wonders for it...

This prank show was one of a series of online pilots for BBC Three, which I reviewed for a previous Gigglebox column.

Out of all of the pilots that BBC Three had to offer earlier in the year, this was deemed to be so successful that it needed a series almost immediately (after all, prank shows are cheap to make, especially in these financially tight times). I was glad, because out of all of them this one was the most surprising, in the sense that it's a prank show that's actually good.

The premise is that four comedians, Joel Dommet, Roisin Conaty, Paul McCaffrey and Marek Larwood, are each given a series of challenges. As one comic performs in front of hidden cameras, the other three force them to do humiliating things in front of their unsuspecting audience. The comedian who fails to do as they're told the most is forced to do a final forfeit at the end of the show. Great stuff.

The show's so successful, of course, because of the people involved. They're all professional comedians. In most prank shows, it's just members of the public who are all unwittingly doing something stupid. In Impractical Jokers however, all four performers know how to get the most from the situations and get those extra laughs. It can be as simple as constantly saying "peek-a-boo" while washing someone's hair, to pretending you're remembering something by tapping your nose on a customer's knee.

If I were to have any complaints about the series it would be with the cartoonish opening sequence and animation that they use, which is too annoying for my liking. Other than that it's a hit.

There appears to be an unwritten rule when it comes to animation in the UK that unless it's by Aardman, it'll be rubbish. Full English seems to obey this rule, which may explain why Channel 4 is airing it at 22.50.

The other reason of course being the crudeness of the humour. It's been described as the British Family Guy by some critics, which brings us to another unwritten rule on animation: if a British comedy's marketed as the British version of a successful American comedy, the British comedy will be rubbish in comparison. Again, Full English conforms.

The series centres on a "typical""British suburban family; put-upon father Edgar (Richard Ayoade), emo daughter Eve (Daisy Haggard), and horrid superrich father-in-law Ken (Oliver Maltman) who has an imaginary, gigantic, green friend called Squidge.

Full English doesn't seem to have one big problem but lots of little ones. The animation by Alex Scarfe (son of Gerald Scarfe) is very poor in terms of quality. The characters seem one dimensional (as opposed to their 2D visual portrayals).

But for me the worst is its attempts at satire. The plot of the first episode sees Eve go on Britain's Got Talent with her band, failing, but getting back on by pretending her parents are dead. How original. It's all the same, with Simon Cowell being a vicious git, contestants doing freakishly horrid acts, and others playing the sympathy vote. It's all been done before.

I'll concede there were some moments of laughter, mainly the more violent cartoonish sequences - like Squidge's attempts to hang himself, or the eldest son of the family hiding under the car, only to get badly hurt because he's so fat he gets terrible friction off the road as the car moves. But other than that I think that Full English hasn't got much going for it.

There's a very good chance that you haven't have heard of Parsley Sidings - and there's a reason for that. Namely it was one of the comedy shows that fell victim to the BBC's tape wiping policy, which saw many shows being lost.

It's always a shame, but even worse when you learn more about the people involved. The leads are played by Arthur Lowe and Ian Lavender from Dad's Army; the other two regulars were Kenneth Connor and Liz Frazer, both noted Carry On actors; and on top of that, it was written by Jim Eldridge, the creator of the long-running Radio 4 series King Street Junior, the first comedy drama as we would recognise it today.

Luckily for us, most of the episodes have since been rediscovered and Radio 4 Extra is now giving them their first repeat run since their debut back in the early 1970s on Radio 2.

Anyway, back to the show. The series is set in a small railway station managed by station master Horace Hepplewhite (Lowe), whose family have managed the station for generations. He's keen on his idiotic son Bertrand (Lavender) to take over, though he really doesn't want to. The other staff consist of Gloria Simpkins (Frazer) - who is in love with Bertrand - cockney porter Percy Valentine (Connor) and 90-year-old signalman Mr. Bradshaw (Connor again).

Listening back on these missing recordings, there are still some laughs, despite the poor quality of the recordings. However, there's one big problem, which is that because we're so used to everyone involved doing much more famous (and superior) work, this fades in comparison. When you hear Lowe and Lavender acting as the Horace and Bertrand, you can't help but picture Mainwaring and Pike. Shame.

It's worth listening to Parsley Sidings of course, but it doesn't stand up in its own right. You're probably better off watching Dad's Army, a Carry On film, or listening to an episode of King Street Junior (once the BBC eventually get round to releasing it commercially, which they haven't yet).