Peter Cook (II)

Jonathan Ross rounds off his BBC career this week with his final chat show on Friday, and this love-letter to comedy duo Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Ross, a devotee of the pair's sardonic, surreal sketches, tells us that Pete and Dud were his first TV comedy love. Their series Not Only... but Also ran on BBC2 between 1965 and 1970. It will surprise no one to learn that the BBC subsequently wiped the tapes of many of its 23 episodes, some of which survive only in script form. Which is where we reach the chancy bit of Pete and Dud: the Lost Sketches. Ross's guests - including Alistair McGowan, Angus Deayton and Hugh Dennis - gather to re-create some of these vanished comedy gems. I hope it works.

It's one of the tragedies of 1960s TV that so many episodes coveted by posterity were wiped at the time, either because it was assumed they'd be of no further interest or simply to reuse the tapes. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's Not Only... But Also fell foul of this folly. However, sketches have survived in script form and here Jonathan Ross assembles a contemporary cast including Angus Deayton, Ade Edmondson and Simon Day to recreate them, while Stephen Fry and David Mitchell among others consider Pete and Dud's legacy.

Right up until the late Seventies, it was common policy for the BBC to wipe reels containing previously broadcast programmes in order to make space in the archives and save money by reusing the tape. One of the most significant casualties was Dudley Moore and Peter Cook's seminal comedy sketch show Not Only... But Also, of which fewer than half of the 22 episodes survive - despite apparent efforts by Peter Cook to purchase the masters from the BBC before they were wiped. While some of Pete & Dud's famous routines have been recovered from other filmed performances, others now exist in script form only.

Hence this project, spearheaded by Jonathan Ross, to resurrect Moore and Cook's lost sketches by reperforming them with a group of contemporary comic actors, including Adrian Edmondson, Alistair McGowan (who is rather good as Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling) and Outnumbered's Hugh Dennis. The scripts still sparkle despite the passing of time, but the performances, perhaps inevitably, make you miss the real Pete and Dud all the more. However, the film has undoubtedly been made with the best of intentions, and includes rare archive footage of the original duo in action too.

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Richard Lester's adaptation of the play by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus is a truly bonkers curio. Set in a blasted post-apocalypse Britain where roughly 20 people have survived, all of whom steadfastly avoid discussing what has happened, the film features an impressive pantheon of 1960s British talent - Milligan, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Ralph Richardson, Arthur Lowe - attempting to carry on as normal with bicycle-powered public transport and the ever-present threat of mutation.

Lowe turns into a parrot, Moore turns into a sheepdog, and Richardson wearily endures his inexorable transformation into the titular rented accommodation. Bleak, dark, surreal, silly and truly unique.

The long-lost 1969 comedy The Bed Sitting Room is finally given the spotlight it deserves. Based on a rather freeform post-apocalyptic play by Spike Milligan, this is rightfully regarded as something of a missing link in UK comedy. Under Richard Lester's inventive direction, Britain is reduced to around a dozen characters following a nuclear "misunderstanding" and the population dwindles further as radioactivity causes people to mutate into parrots, wardrobes and the titular cheap accommodation - yes, Spike Milligan clearly did write this. It's a bleak and funny mix of music hall gags and Samuel Beckett-style existentialism with a cast including the great Michael Hordern, Arthur Lowe, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Marty Feldman.

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