John Esmonde

Comfort classic: The Good Life

A show that gently sends up the English middle class is built on a sharp script and consummate acting.

Lunch With Bob Larbey

A few years back, I decided I owed Bob Larbey a pint. I've long thought Ever Decreasing Circles is the best there is, and with John Esmonde having died in 2008, there was only Bob left to thank.

When Richard Briers died recently aged 79, there was a huge outpouring of affection for one of our great comic actors. Audiences felt as if they'd lost a favourite uncle.

It was John Esmonde and Bob Larbey's 1975 sitcom, which ran on BBC1 for three years, that cemented Briers's place in our hearts. He played Tom Good, an ex-City man who turned his back on his old life to set up a smallholding with wife Barbara in the London suburb of Surbiton.

As a tribute, G.O.L.D. is broadcasting back-to-back episodes, starting with episode seven of series one, followed by all of series two and ending with the final episode of series four. Age hasn't wearied a minute of it.

Ever Decreasing Circles (Christmas special): The loudest laugh you'll ever hear in a BBC sitcom turns up in this, when Richard Briers wakes up on Boxing Day to discover lying next to him in bed is ... Well, you can guess. It's a hysterical, touching, slightly surreal and avowedly inspiring episode that avoids all cloying sentimentality and goes instead for clumsy, authentic emotion.

How different from the Command Performance of The Good Life before Her Majesty at the BBC's TV centre. This was a charming instance of impromptu, informal, pop in and see us some time, pot luck entertainment. Apart from filming for two days instead of one and rehearsing all day before the performance, it was just like any ordinary Good Life (tonight BBC1).

The Other One (BBC1) is an enjoyable comedy series about British innocents abroad. Richard Briers is the chump with delusions of adequacy ('I keep on slipping into Spanish without realising it') and Michael Gambon is his boring friend. Lightweight stuff, but at least palatable, which puts it in sharp contrast with Are You Being Served?, still pursuing its innuendo-strewn course.

The Good Life (BBC1) is by now clearly established as the best Nice Couple sitcom on the screen, partly because Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal are a genuinely Nice Couple, but mainly because of the inspired interference from their snotty neighbour, Margo. [...] A meticulously groomed, flint-profiled ballbreaker with a taste for leopard-skin prints, Margo is the repository of every known prejudice common among the landless landed gentry - as bigoted as Alf Garnett but without his flexibility.

The Good Life (BBC1) is a civilised new comedy series with considerable charm and Richard Briers. There is a lot of bad meat sold in the comedy market, but I can recommend this as very fresh and pleasant.

The Fenn Street Gang (LWT), or Son of Please Sir, demonstrates television's inability to let a good thing go. It pursues the careers of Form 30 into the wider world and larger opportunities which teachers tell us await us. This series suffers immediately from the lack of the adult actors, who gave it strength and stature.