Jeff Pope

The Fattest Man in Britain looked as if it was going to be filed under Northern Grotesque. You had Bobby Ball in a cab promising his excited Japanese passengers "the eighth wonder of the world". And then you saw Georgie's pudgy hand reaching for the aftershave bottle and splashing it on underneath a bingo wing the size of a sofa cushion. When Timothy Spall, just visible inside his fat suit, began singing "Turning Japanese", complete with slitty-eye gestures, for his paying guests it looked as if we were in for an exercise of gleeful bad taste. In fact, Caroline Aherne's drama (co-written with producer Jeff Pope) turned out to be a lot sweeter and life-affirming than you might have expected, contriving a Beauty and the Beast relationship between Georgie and Amy, the community-service girl who came to clear his garden. For her, he was the dad she's never had; for him, she was the first person to care for him who didn't have an interest in him getting bigger. Although he was initially devastated by the realisation that he had a heavier rival ("If I'm not the fattest, what am I, eh? I'm just a fat man") he finally struggled out of his chair and slimmed down to win her back. I wasn't entirely convinced that it would have been as easy as it was made to look, but very happy to pretend while it lasted.

Last Night's TV - The Fattest Man in Britain

What a tour de force Caroline Aherne and Jeff Pope are. The Fattest Man in Britain was a modern day fairytale. Its sentimentality and morality message were not in-your-face obvious, but it without doubt left me feeling the goodwill to all men thing.

Helped by a top-form Timothy Spall in a fat suit, writers Caroline Aherne and Jeff Pope wittily poked and prodded at the fascination of the freak show, an industry fuelled by endless TV shock-horror reality exposes. 'I'm happy the way I am - look at the joy I bring to people,' claimed Spall's Georgie, a money machine for weaselly agent Morris who pitched up with taxiloads of foreign tourists for whom Georgie would karaoke Rio or Turning Japanese, as geography dictated. Georgie's journey from delusion to disillusion - 'If I'm not the fattest then what am I? Just a fat man, a fat man sat in his chair' - was pretty clearly signposted. And the tone bumpily lurched between broad farce and modern tragedy. But as Georgie's real self emerged from amid the self-protective folds of flab, only the hardest of hearts wouldn't have raised a cheer.

Nevertheless, City Lights does achieve its basic (and basically noble) aim of being good fun to watch. The dialogue is sharp, the relationships between all the characters believable - and the cast uniformly strong. In particular, it's good to see Robson Green so obviously enjoying himself in the lead role.

City Lights outshines Apprentice

The second outing of The Apprentice last night lost 300,000 viewers and was beaten by Robson Green's new series City Lights on ITV1.

Northern Lights glows with success

ITV1 comedy drama Northern Lights, starring Robson Green and Mark Benton, just squeezed out BBC1's Life on Mars to claim the 9pm ratings honours last night.

Not only that, but Howie has recently been promoted to management - which means that Colin, normally the dominant one, has to put up with his old mucker being his boss. It also means the programme can throw an element of class politics that surely owes more to Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? than to modern British life.

Northern Lights is a likeable entertainment, providing a comforting, comedic echo of the times when the workplace really was an area of strife. Writers Jeff Pope and Bob Mills have taken care to set their protagonists in differing domestic contexts to highlight their differences as well as their deep friendship.

After six weeks, Bob Martin has turned out to be both an amusing, sharp series, and also a massive flop for ITV. It's ironic that a series that has been one of the most truthful looks into the world of television should also be subjected to some subtle rescheduling by ITV, with seemingly every episode ending with an apologetic "Next week's programme will be at the slightly later time ..."