Mark Williams (I)

BBC1, you're spoiling us. Following two weeks of daytime drama in Moving On, they're giving us this charming weekday comedy drama. It stars Sanjeev Bhaskar as a high-flying Delhi graduate who arrives in the UK in 1963 as part of the first wave of Indian doctors wooed by then health minister Enoch Powell. Arriving in a sleepy Welsh mining village, his glamorous wife's not too happy with the situation. And neither are the locals, including the Coal Board's slightly snooty local manager (Mark Williams), who obviously has a few skeletons in his cupboard. It's a lovely slice of nostalgia, albeit served with a big dollop of social comment.

Inspired by Dylan Thomas's nostalgic anecdotal tale, Mark Watson's observant comedy is set in the household of young Owen Rhys (Oliver Bunyan/Mark Williams) over a series of Christmases in 1980s South Wales. Every year, the peace of the family home, where Owen lives with his gloomy father (Mark Lewis Jones) and obsessive mother (Ruth Jones), is disturbed by the yuletide arrival of Owen's two uncles (Steve Speirs and Paul Kaye) and nephew (Jamie Burch/Rhys McLellan). In a glimpse of three of these gatherings, while Owen and Maurice are seen maturing into young men, their male elders merely engage in ever-more puerile bouts of sibling rivalry.

Nick Hornby is arguably an accomplished writer, but as his new book hits the shelves and his screenplay for An Education reaches the silver screen, this comedy series co-written with journalist Giles Smith shows signs that he is spreading himself too thinly. The tale of an idiotic, ageing rock drummer who has inadvertently become the richest man in Britain, it relies too heavily on one-note gags about his wealth, while ignoring any potential to explore deeper themes. The talents of Mark Williams, Russell Tovey and Lynda Bellingham are wasted as the rock star, his personal manager, and his dotty mother. Shame.