Nancy Banks-Smith

"Bachelor Father" has a lot going for it, plenty of sound professional talent pushing and polishing it. But it isn't very funny.

I cannot say how earnestly I wished "Never Say Die" (Granada), the one new series on offer, to succeed. Critics, like human beings, whom in some respects they resemble, would far rather be entertained than irritated. I may have seen a more tasteless, crass and cumbersome comedy, but merciful amnesia has blotted it from memory.

Either the programme planners are mad or I am. And I'm fine. On second thoughts, I don't feel all that well. But I attribute that wholly to watching a comedy-thriller (that's what it says here, "Comedy-Thriller") on smallpox (Thames) and a documentary on diabetes (BBC1).

"The Kenny Everett Explosion" (London Weekend) was a rather nasty accident and one hopes he is now going on as well as can be expected.

"Hark At Barker" (London Weekend) was based, it said, on an idea by Alun Owen. I have considerable respect for both Barker and Owen and I think it might have been kinder to look the other way.

"Mind Your Own Business" (BBC1) was as funny as it was filthy. [...] You could say it was out of "Curry and Chips" and "Till Death". [...] It was a way of deflating ignorance by exploding it in laughter. Dragging it out of the subconscious, on to the screen. What is seen is no longer obscene. It was a brave thing to do and it will not be universally accepted or applauded as such. But this is one of the nights when I could forgive the BBC all their sins of omission and commission for having the courage to screen it.

I would suggest that there is no such thing as a house-proud writer, as the husband in "His and Hers" improbably purports to be. The mere act of getting a coherent thought on paper is inseparable from a squalid snowstorm of crumpled copy, a filled ashtray, several empty coffee cups and a broody suicidal look such as one might surprise on the face of an egg-bound hen.

I feel kinder towards "Eddie in August" because it tried something new. If you can call a silent film new. Silent except for music and sound effects. It gave the whole thing a dream-like feeling (do people talk in your dreams?) and a sensation of being alone except for the rumbling in your stomach.

I should not approve at all of "Gas and Gaiters." So uncommitted, so unsatyric. But it is a simple, gentle thing, excellently acted, and if it says nothing crucial about Christianity today, well, thank God for that.

Old ladies are a good deal franker and funnier about the fundamentals of life and death than they are given credit for. And Ada's an old lady who's going steady with a grave digger. The series is by Vince Powell and Harry Driver, a dependable brand name in comedy. Ada and her Walter are perhaps a fraction on the sweet side so far but, given time, they may show their dentures.