Ian Wolf

BBC Three has launched a new comedy show starring a comedian called Russell, to go alongside its other big comedy series, also starring a comedian called Russell.

Live at the Electric is a show which mixes stand-up from Russell Kane with sketches and songs from a huge range of different performers: Humphrey Ker, Nick Helm, and American Hari Kondabolu, as well as sketch troupes Two Episodes of Mash, Jigsaw, Wittank, Lady Garden and Totally Tom.

As with any show featuring so many acts, the quality varies from skit to skit. However, you can almost find something you like. For me, my favourite moment was Wittank's sketch in which a man finishes a job interview, only for his suitcase to open a huge torrent of porn mags falls out of it.

If I were to criticise anything it would be the camera work, mainly duringl Kane's stand-up. I don't mind it if it cuts to Kane talking to camera, but often it would cut to a shot from the back of the stage, filming through a broken window for the supposed purposes of being cool. No, just stick to Kane, or the audience reaction. Don't cut it so you can't actually see anyone.

I would urge readers to give Live at the Electric a go, partly because it's highly entertaining but mainly because it attracted less than half-a-million viewers when it went out on Thursday. So it will only be a matter of time before Zai Bennent, head of BBC Three, axes this along with the rest of the channel's comedy output...

With Nobbs On is a three-part series in which comedy writer David Nobbs, most famous as the creator of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, talks about his writing career.

The first episode covers his earliest years, before Perrin, dealing with his schooldays, his National Service, his "career" in journalism and finally getting some material on television by writing for That Was The Week That Was.

I found With Nobbs On to be an entertaining, amusing, and interesting programme. Here and there, there's a brief glimpse at some silly event from his life; such as when he was doing his National Service and how he was told not to go to the local brothel, complete with directions on how to get there; to his time at the Sheffield Star and his feeble attempts to get vox pops from the locals on international affairs.

Then there are his first novels such as The Itinerate Lodger, in which the eponymous character gets a job as a postman and decides to deliver 6.5 letters to each address, and his first TW3 material, which included a parody of the coverage at Cowes that instead covered darts.

However, the most important thing you can learn from David Nobbs appears to be: Time your sexual references. I agree. And anyone who doesn't is a tit.

Births, Deaths and Marriages is a new sitcom written by and starring David Schneider as Malcolm Fox, a by-the-book and seemingly dull registrar.

The registry office has recently taken on a new manager from the local car parking department called Lorna (Sarah Hadland), who has some odd ideas on increasing profit, such as converting the stationary cupboard into a reception room, organising weddings at theme parks, and limiting other weddings to ten minutes in length.

There are some strong moments in Births, Deaths and Marriages. For example, Malcolm having to officiate a wedding taking place on a roller coast, despite his crippling vertigo - and Schneider can certainly perform well - but I'm unsure about the quality of material.

I can't help but think that the wedding vows are there purely to take up space on the script. Also, the show follows the gag about disabled people not having a leg to stand on. A bit old hat, don't you think?

Clever Peter is a sketch troupe featuring Richard Bond, Edward Eales-White and William Hartley, and by the sounds of things a rather good one.

It's a short programme, consisting of four episodes 15 minutes long, but the sketches in it were entertaining and rather appropriately, clever. Sketches featured an MP who claimed expenses on a pygmy hippo and is then ordered as punishment to kill the Danish ambassador (who actually has a Dutch accent); a diary written in gobbledegook; a man obsessed with lists leaving his girlfriend; and an old woman who has an enterprising way of dealing with door-to-door salesmen.

The humour in it is slightly surreal, but it's very good, while the performances were energetic. It certainly sounds like Strap In - It's Clever Peter could build into a more successful programme.

For me, Kind Hearts and Coronets is my favourite of the Ealing Comedies. As a result I was somewhat worried by the fact that someone would want to make a sequel to it.

In this story, following the death of Duke Louis (Dennis Price in the film), his wife Lady Edith takes the title, refusing to recognise the claim issued by Louis's biological daughter Unity Holland (played by Natalie Walter). Unity decides to get the title the old fashioned way - murdering all the other claimants...

The story sees Unity beginning her murder spree in 1939, through World War Two and after it. She then starts to kill the seven claimants: Lady Edith Gascoyne, fighter pilot Louis Gascoyne, spiv Henry Gascoyne, far-right twins Adalbert and Ughtred Gascoyne, socialist Marmaduke Gascoyne, and rubbish poet Ronald Gascoyne, all of whom are played by Alistair McGowan.

McGowan obviously has it easier than Guinness did. For starters, two of the characters are twins so they can have the same sort of voice. Also, Marmaduke suffers from a stutter so that gives another silly voice to play with.

However, it seems to have pulled it off. I don't think that this story is in any way a sort of sacrilege against the original; after all, the film changes bits from the original novel (in the novel the murderer was half-Jewish, not half-Italian).

An entertaining tale, then, with a nice story and set up...

Gigglebox weekly #48 - Cardinal Burns

This week a new sketch was launched on E4. This isn't usually something to be hopeful about, but Cardinal Burns certainly seems to have potential.

This series is odd for several reasons. Not only is this a show featuring monologues from various animals living in a seaside rock pool, but it's actually a remake of a show, using most of the same performers.

Created back in 1997 by Lynne Truss (her of the totalitarian approach to grammar fame), the original series consisted of six 15-minute monologues with no audience laughter. This version, recorded in front of a live audience at Radio 4's More Than Words festival, consists of three 30-minute shows, two stories per edition, with Truss introducing the stories.

The first of these tales featured Bill Wallis as a periwinkle who is fond of telling old gags, almost akin to an end-of-the-pier comic, who rants about how the English enjoy eating him. The second stars Geoffrey Palmer as moaning hermit crab who doesn't get along with the amoeba that lives and protects him.

I wasn't expecting much from this, but I rather enjoyed it in the end. The hermit crab story was my personal favourite out of the two, especially when he was panicking about being fished out of the pool by children with nets, causing him to exclaim that he actually likes the amoeba in a sudden outburst...

Overall, a likeable series and rather diverting. Fun in an unusual way.

This is the second series of Open Letters, in which Sheffield-born comic Tom Wrigglesworth attempts to solve the issues surrounding Britain's most annoying businesses in a form of a letter to the boss of a major company.

In the opening episode, Wrigglesworth wrote, or rather performed as it is basically a stand-up routine, a letter to the head of comfused.com about why they should make insurance less confusing.

There were some humorous moments, but I think you can tell the quality of the show when you discover that the funniest bits are not from Wrigglesworth, but from his grandmother, when she is encouraged to write to her life insurance provider about herself and her husband being at increased risk thanks to a bread maker. Don't get me wrong, it's funny, but most of the show is lacking in big laughs.

For me, the best contribution from Wrigglesworth was his idea on how to improve the insurance business, which involved a live TV show hosted by John McCririck. However, most of the time it's a bit of an information overload full of complaints rather than anything comedic.

Radio weekly #10

This week Ian Wolf listens to the inner thoughts of some sea creatures and learns how John McCririck could liven up the insurance industry...

This new impressionism show started on Channel 4 this week as part of a big comedy line up on the channel (along with 8 Out of 10 Cats, Alan Carr: Chatty Man and Stand Up For the Week).

It features Morgana Robinson and Terry Mynott impersonating a certain range of people. In this first episode there's heavyweight political figures but instead that particular class of usually pointless celebrity - the likes of Gordon Ramsey, Amy Childs and Danny Dyer.

Now for me impressionism usually has one big problem, which is trying to get the performer to look like the person they are pretending to be as well as getting to sound like them. That's why I think the best impressionism shows are Spitting Image and the radio version of Dead Ringers, because in both shows you don't see the performers, only the image in your head, or the rubbery visage.

In terms of this show, I'm not the best to judge the quality of the impressions, although that's because I tend not to watch most of the shows that those particular people perform in. I've never watched The Voice or Embarrassing Bodies, so I don't really know what Jessie J or Dr. Christian Jessen sound like.

However, in terms of the ideas that were generated, I found them to be good. I liked the sketch in which David Attenborough was observing Frankie Boyle in his natural habitat, and Fearne Cotton's children's game show in which kids try to act like celebrities.

If I were to be more critical I'd say that the satire isn't as hard hitting as it could be. It's not as vicious as Spitting Image was, so it's more akin to Dead Ringers in that respect. But still, it's a decent enough programme and should do well in my opinion...