Mark Williams (I)

Blandings is a new comedy series adapted from a collection of novels by P.G. Wodehouse, but it's already attracted a wide range of criticism. Much of the vitriol targets the show's family-friendly, 6.30pm slot on a Sunday evening, but there's also criticism from die-hard Wodehouse fans who believe that any adaptation of his work is sacrilege. Hey ho.

The series follows the residents of Blandings Castle; Clarence (Timothy Spall), who just wants a quiet life - and to spend time with his beloved pig, the Empress; his sister Connie (Jennifer Saunders), who constantly interfering with other people's business; and Clarence's loyal butler Beach (Mark Williams) - all of whom are pestered by visits from Clarence's idiotic son Freddie (Jack Farthing). In the opening episode, Clarence tries to enter the Empress into a fattest-pig contest, but his pig man is put in jail by his main rival.

The first thing that came to me when watching Blandings is that Spall can play a toff better than I thought. His performance as Clarence was great, as is his delivery of Wodehouse's lines, like when he demonstrates how persuasive his late wife was: "She once put forth such a forceful case for beetroot I actually put some in my mouth."

I was a bit annoyed by the gimmicky use of comic sound effects, whether it be with Freddie's terrible driving or Connie's stormy demands. You can try to ignore it, but it gets a bit tedious after a while.

On the whole though, Blandings is an entertaining half-hour and a decent way to pass the time - although I still expect a few comments from fans trying to push his books into my hands.

A pig eating cake was the most amusing thing about BBC1's Sunday teatime comedy Blandings, which can't have been the intention of PG Wodehouse, whose tales of upper-class twittery inspired this waste of half an hour. Timothy Spall gave good drawl as eccentric Lord Emsworth and Mark Williams was as solid as you'd expect as the long-suffering butler; but civilisation has come too far to put trouserless yokels cavorting on a table in the hope of laughter.

Blandings is based in part on the rather funny PG Wodehouse novels and stars Jennifer Saunders, Mark Williams and Timothy Spall. Now, the books themselves aren't exactly hard-hitting bits of realism, but there's nothing worse than a comedy in which everyone involved (with the exception of the above-mentioned) is grinning and acting like idiots because they know the whole thing is silly. So I gave up after 10 minutes. Absolutely horrendous and twee.

With their grand houses and period settings, it's a wonder PG Wodehouse's work hasn't been plundered by television more often. Clive Exton's exuberant Nineties adaptations of Jeeves and Wooster, starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, were highly successful, but there has been nothing since. However, judging by the iffy first episode of this new six-part series, based on the Blandings Castle stories and reworked by Guy Andrews, it seems that Wodehouse's precise comic world is pretty hard to pull off.

The problem lies not with the cast, which is certainly top-notch. Timothy Spall plays bumbling Lord Clarence Emsworth, more interested in pigs than people. Jennifer Saunders delights as his battleaxe sister Connie. And there's good work from Jack Farthing as Clarence's hapless son Freddie, and Mark Williams as Beach, the butler. But the episode can't quite sustain the necessary brio and the bonhomie eventually wears thin. Tonight's tale involves Clarence's rivalry with neighbour Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe (Robert Bathurst) over a Fattest Pig competition and Connie's attempt to prevent niece Angela (Alice Orr-Ewing) from an unsuitable marriage.

Nostalgia TV at its best

The forthcoming GK Chesterton adaptation of Father Brown and PG Wodehouse adaptation of Blandings, both starring Mark Williams, represent a welcome attempt to bring back a gentler form of drama that has fallen out of fashion.

Red Dwarf's 10 best supporting characters

Mark selects the top ten of Red Dwarf's episodic characters, with some help from Queeg, Mr Flibble and Duane Dibley...

David Jason goes behind the camera for the Pearly Gates

Sir David Jason is stepping behind the camera for his next project. Pearly Gates, which stars The Fast Show's Mark Williams and is written by Ben Sweet, centers around a family-owned funeral business.

A welcome repeat for this charming series starring Sanjeev Bhaskar, which was a big hit with our readers (who described it as 'an antidote to the winter blues'). Bhaskar plays high-flying Delhi graduate Dr Prem Sharma, who arrives in the UK in 1963 in the first wave of Indian doctors wooed by then health minister Enoch Powell. The doctor's glamorous wife isn't too happy with the sleepy Welsh mining village where they are to live. And the locals have their own issues, including the Coal Board's snooty local manager (Mark Williams), who has a few skeletons in his cupboard. It's a lovely slice of nostalgia, served with a big dollop of social comment. More tomorrow at 3.30pm.

Fans of gentle 1960s-set village comedy dramas must have been gutted when Heartbeat was cancelled recently. But lucky them, it's back, in daytime form, under the name The Indian Doctor. True, it's about a GP, not a policeman, arriving in a small Welsh town where classic pop songs soundtrack every plot development. And there's a racial twist, as the hero is Sanjeev Bhaskar's Dr Prem Sharma, fresh from Delhi with his glamorous wife Kamini, part of the influx of Indian doctors recruited by health minister Enoch Powell to staff the NHS.

The locals are completely ignorant about Indians - they're even shown a special information film to brief them on their new neighbour, followed by a screening of The Millionairess, the dodgy film in which Peter Sellers pretends to be Indian and sings Goodness Gracious Me, a nod to the title of Bhaskar's breakthrough sketch show.

But while this might sound on paper like the basis for a gritty drama about racism and immigration, it's been made as a cheerful afternoon wallow in the lighter side of culture clash. Pretty much everyone is well-meaning, apart from designated villain Mark Williams, playing the moustache-twirling Coal Board boss and his snobby wife. They invite the Sharmas to a dinner party, complete with tasteless Vesta Curry from a box to make them feel at home, thinking that they're doing the poor rubes a big favour - only to find that Mrs S is from an aristocratic Indian family, more used to mixing with the Mountbattens.

Meanwhile, the rest of the town are friendly and the one family who are a little unsure about having an Indian doctor are quickly won over when he comes through in an emergency, so that's all right then. Still, perhaps that's fair enough - not every immigrant to Britain suffered racism, particularly in 1963 when the country was crying out for them, and it would be a shame if every fictional account was full of unpleasantness, as if - in the long run - people didn't manage mostly to settle in perfectly well. And this isn't heavyweight drama, just a watchable and mildly amusing enough nostalgic little series.