Nancy Banks-Smith

Archive: Nancy Banks-Smith reviews Abigail's Party, '77

Any party on TV is the signal for insult, indigestion and vomiting off.

Archive: Two Ronnies review, 26 May 1978

Ronnie Corbett - 'He looks like one of those shopkeepers who are continually smitten by big business'

Archive: Nancy Banks-Smith on death of Dermot Morgan

The death of a comic is often tragic - but we don't have to believe it if we don't want to.

The Judas Tree was one of David Renwick's convoluted, gothic puzzles, shot through with comedy. There was, for instance, something really nasty in the woodshed. The murderer, who was also a detective writer, spelled out the dark art of bamboozlement: "The trick is to fool the reader into trusting all the wrong people, and then - in the most innocent and everyday details - sow the seeds of terror." Agatha Christie, however, once said that the best murder was simply to push someone down the stairs. Watch out for the white Persian cat, which at one point is quite obviously thrown on to a table by the cat wrangler, and bitterly resents it.

To make Thursdays a bit more bearable, BBC2 has filled 90 minutes with comedy. I am rather partial to Bellamy's People, in which the award-winning Gary Bellamy (he is slightly shifty about which award) meets appallingly probable people.

Victoria Wood's Midlife Christmas (BBC1, Thursday), nine years in the coming and worth the wait, was just as good as Morecambe and Wise. Every sketch was polished till it shone, right down to the big finish, a Busby Berkeley production number where bespectacled blokes in beige woollies and their wives in underwired undies danced exhilaratingly to Let's Do It.

In an extended sketch, Bo Beaumont (Julie Walters), an actress whose career had been all downhill since she appeared as Mrs Overall in a low-budget soap, and her dowdy, devoted assistant, Wendy (Victoria Wood), went through a series of disastrous TV auditions from I Am a Celebrity (based on a Japanese endurance game) to Dancing On Ice with Torvill and Dean (memorable for Julie Walters extraordinary legs, collapsible as sugar tongs). We left them at home enjoying When Gastric Bands Wear Out.

Another sketch, Lark Pies to Cranchesterfield, the sepia-tinted tale of a poor flitcher and his daughter, Araminty, who left home to better herself in the post office ("Our Araminty's going to 'ave 'er 'air straightened!") caught programmes like Cranford and Victorian Farm Christmas full in the small of the back. Much as the Manchester express caught Bessie ("Cow on the line!") as she grazed unaware on the railway track in Cranford.

Catherine Tate's Nan, a ruthlessly truthful creation, is best taken short. Nan's Christmas Carol (BBC1, Friday), longer than usual and later than usual because of Nan's language, cast her as a combatative Scrooge making three ghosts and her deceased husband sorry they were born. Or died. The most eye- catching ghost was David Tennant, who bore a striking resemblance to Russell Brand.

Taking the Flak (BBC2), which competes for the same airtime, begins promisingly enough.

It's a struggle for the Getting On nurses - to decide if they can take a dead patient's cake

Curiously, it reminded me of Dinnerladies, which Victoria Wood wanted shot as this is: naturalistically. It is very female and unfazed by death.

Omid Djalili, heavily upholstered as Henry, was in close conference with Cardinal Wolsey. "Ah hate that woman. She gotta go. I'm the King of England. Help a brother out!" At this point Catherine of Aragon irrupted. "My mother warned me. All Englishmen are homosexuals and horse-lovers." Henry: "At least mah horse don't bite mah balls." Catherine: "You love your horse more than me. Henry VIII! Henry the Fat! Henry the no-dick-bastard more like."

Exit the queen in a royal huff. Peace came like a poultice to heal the blows of sound. Silence fell as softly as goose-feathers. Henry said nothing rather noisily. "All right," said Wolsey after an awkward pause, "I'll talk to the Pope."