Johnny Vegas

A cute kitten being pecked to death by a robin on a Christmas card would have been funnier than this jumble of a play by Andy Lynch (again), here assisted by Johnny Vegas. Vegas also played Les Dawson. The plot concerned Dawson being a surprise appointment to host the BBC's top Saturday evening attraction of yesteryear, Blankety Blank. The character action was between Dawson and a disapproving BBC executive, played by Nicholas Parsons. It sounded like a bundle of unwashed insecurities being laundered in public as well as a waste of the serious talents of Nicholas Parsons, the best straight man in the business.

Johnny Vegas used to be the ubiquitous clown of the moment but, having been promoted as the most unpredictable man in light entertainment, became slightly too unpredictable and now seems required to attempt reinvention as a character actor. The acute afternoon play he co-wrote, Chequebook and Pen, conjured up the ghost of Les Dawson, with Vegas doing an impassioned impression of the comedian in his awkward Blankety Blank days. Nicholas Parsons, who happily seems to have forgotten where self-parody lies, was the dame of the piece, playing himself as a devious game-show host rival.

Vegas's play discovered a moral of its own in the compromises Dawson was forced to make to become a prime-time star; in a bravura closing argument, he put the case that creativity had nothing to do with packaging or consumers but was all about "doing what you believe is right and doing it your way". Try telling that to Simon Cowell.

Does that title ring a bell? Can you hear Les Dawson saying it as he presented the humble prizes on Blankety Blank? This play, starring Johnny Vegas, co-written by him with Andrew Lynch, imagines how the BBC might have engaged the great Les (played by Vegas) back in the 1980s, to host the prime-time show. Nicholas Parsons plays Farson, embodiment of traditional forces at the BBC, opponent of all the comic subversion Les stood for, his nemesis. It's fiction. How I wish the late Mike Craig, comedy producer, were still around to discuss it on Front Row.

Sky Arts is doing its bit to promote drama, launching a series of Chekhov Comedy Shorts to celebrate the playwright's 150th anniversary.

The opener, A Reluctant Tragic Hero, sticks Johnny Vegas and Mackenzie Crook in a lavishly dressed but irredeemably stagey drawing room set, where the topic under discussion is domestic purgatory. Well, Vegas not so much discusses as rants, while Crook fills half an hour with an admirably extensive set of facial responses.

While entertaining enough, the play never quite takes off.

Vegas, for all his energy and charisma, never appears comfortable with the text. Also, somebody should have told Chekhov that the play's pay-off gag is a bit on the weak side.

Johnny Vegas is perhaps someone you would not automatically associate with Anton Chekhov. Likewise Mackenzie Crook. But here they are in Chekhov: Comedy Shorts (Sky Arts 2). In this first one, A Reluctant Tragic Hero, Vegas plays Tolkachov, a man at the very end of his tether, fed up with running tedious shopping errands for his family. Crook is Murashkin, Tolkachov's mate, who should be - tries to be - sympathetic, but then gets it all wrong and adds to poor Tolkachov's problems.

And hey, it works. Vegas gets to do what he's designed to do - make a lot of noise and be miserable (he has tragedy built into his features). Crook gets to say not very much, be a bit gormless, and have a long, hollow face. Which suits him fine, too. Nineteeth-century Russia could easily be 21st-century anywhere; I guess that - the continuing relevance - is what makes Chekhov a dude. Hey, who said this column can't do serious literary criticism?

Anyway, they're quite good fun, and there are more to come, with other unlikely Chekhovian actors including Steve Coogan, Julia Davies and Mathew Horne. Bring 'em on.

Another Sky Arts project that will have them scuffing their Hush Puppies with envy over at BBC4: a series of Anton Chekhov's one-act comic plays, revived to celebrate his 150th birthday and featuring some of Britain's best comedy actors.

Tonight it's A Reluctant Tragic Hero, starring Johnny Vegas in overdrive as the put-upon Tolkachov, a man given so many errands to run by his wife and friends that he's come to borrow a gun from his friend Murashkin (Mackenzie Crook).

Nothing gets in the way of Vegas's boiling monologues: with a one-room set, painted backdrop, bright lighting, straightforward translation and no music, it's like a 1970s production and all the better for it.

Video preview: Chekhov Comedy Shorts

In this clip, Johnny Vegas explains to Mackenzie Crook the pleasures of settling down for a good night's kip, and what it's like to have that peace shattered by one thing in particular...

Produced by Baby Cow and featuring the likes of Steve Coogan and Julia Davis in future episodes, these delicious sub-half-hour productions recall a lost age of relatively low-budget TV treatment of the classics. In the opener, Johnny Vegas is perfectly cast as the put-upon Tolkachov, who visits his friend Murashkin (Mackenzie Crook) to deliver a spittle-flecked monologue full of pathos and purgatory about his put-upon working and domestic life, only to get more, or rather less, than he bargained for, in the apparently sympathetic Crook's eventual response.

Among the hosts who'll be revisiting their home towns in this new series are Johnny Vegas and Russell Kane, but for tonight's opener it's Ben Elton, performing his first live stand up in a decade. The so-called "Godfather Of Alternative" has become comedy's embarrassing Dad in recent years, what with We Will Rock You and all, but his routines on rebranding and body piercing in particular show that he's still driven by the same moral sense and sarcastic despair at modern life as ever. Jason Byrne and Canadian Tom Stade guest.