Nancy Banks-Smith

Well, it was a Galton and Simpson comedy about three soccer supporters and three ballet devotees (and three weird sisters shrieking under the carriage seats). And you'd expect it to be better than it was. One for the lads.

Critics tend to see the first and last of a series which is like being in on the christening and the funeral. You do miss something. It says outside Thames that I found the first episode charming. Did I? The natural inclination, when your verbals are read out in court like that, is to deny it all hotly. But charm still seemed about right for the last episode last night.

Written jointly by Julia Jones and Donald Churchill, I would say at a guess that they divided the first episode between them for there is a different tone and touch about the two. I particularly enjoyed Miss Pegg, who has the kind of innocence which expects a taxi driver to carry bags and the kind of competence to see he does.

"Spring and Autumn" when it began was a pleasantly sentimental story about the alliance of an old man evicted from his demolished home and a young boy from a broken home. It had a kind of charm. The second series last night had a lot of plot.

"How's Your Father?" Ah, now you don't really want me to tell you? Once in a Gardener's Question Time programme the expert said of an offending marrow that it was "mouldy at its distal end and soggy at its centre." I don't quite know what it means but it always sounds to me an excellent all purpose curse. And somehow true about rather a lot of TV comedy.

One of the endearing things about Benny Hill (Thames repeat) is his relish for truly terrible TV, old jokes, awful old films, commercials, westerns, action replays, repeats. All this is a solace not to say poultice at a time like this, when there is nothing much on but truly terrible TV.

I hadn't, as it happens, seen the excellent little comedy by Roy Clarke, which replaced the advertised Comedy Playhouse, as unmade as a bed. The best television, well one kind of best, isn't going anywhere. It sits and sort of steams at you in a rich and redolent way.

When Archibald asked his uncle what a worm such as he could offer a bally goddess like Aurelia Cammerleigh, Mr Mulliner wisely mentioned money, love and Archie's superb impression of a chicken laying an egg. Unwisely Archie brushed this wise advice aside. But money and love do matter and a loving and expensive production would have brought the play nearer the original.

In "A girl's best friend" (BBC1's Comedy Playhouse) the audience appeared to die in the first 10 minutes. This does happen from time to time. They just sit there nicely and politely as if observing 20 minutes' silence for Peron. And I have never known them wrong.

Galton and Simpson's Comedy Playhouse (BBC1) was black beyond belief. It had the Dr Who-ish premise of the world vacuum-cleaned empty of people. Except a mother and son in Hampton Wick.