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.

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.

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.

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.

All New Shooting Stars, a one-off special, was an object lesson in never going back. Vic and Bob seemed like their own fathers. The only recognisable celebrity was Jack Dee, who, with a blue tit balanced on his head, stood nose to nose with an opera singer giving Nessun Dorma plenty of welly. Any trembling or precipitation of the tit would indicate failure and cost him a beautiful pillowcase. To watch Dee crack into a smile was joy enough for one night.

All New Shooting Stars, a one-off special, was an object lesson in never going back. Vic and Bob seemed like their own fathers. The only recognisable celebrity was Jack Dee, who, with a blue tit balanced on his head, stood nose to nose with an opera singer giving Nessun Dorma plenty of welly. Any trembling or precipitation of the tit would indicate failure and cost him a beautiful pillowcase. To watch Dee crack into a smile was joy enough for one night.