Richard Briers

Alf is an elderly gentleman and he's getting very confused. He can hear voices in his head and one of them is his own from the days when he was married. This play by Ed Harris is billed as a tender comedy and there are moments when Alf's confusion becomes gently amusing. But the overall feeling is one of sadness and loss. Alf is grieving fomr his wife, but also mourning the troubled state of their marriage and the onset of dementia. He describes the attack upon his memory as like that of an imperial army, with different countries falling every day. Richard Briers and Rory Kinnear play Alf the older and younger with understated directness and genuine empathy. A brilliant drama.

Ever Decreasing Circles (Christmas special): The loudest laugh you'll ever hear in a BBC sitcom turns up in this, when Richard Briers wakes up on Boxing Day to discover lying next to him in bed is ... Well, you can guess. It's a hysterical, touching, slightly surreal and avowedly inspiring episode that avoids all cloying sentimentality and goes instead for clumsy, authentic emotion.

In Minder (Thames) Terry was doing 18 moons in the shovel. This was a distinctly sombre story about Richard Briers wanting to take over the world, or some convenient piece of it. Luckily for us, he was the sort of man who brought bullet-proof vests from Arthur Daley.

The Other One (BBC1) is an enjoyable comedy series about British innocents abroad. Richard Briers is the chump with delusions of adequacy ('I keep on slipping into Spanish without realising it') and Michael Gambon is his boring friend. Lightweight stuff, but at least palatable, which puts it in sharp contrast with Are You Being Served?, still pursuing its innuendo-strewn course.

The Good Life (BBC1) is by now clearly established as the best Nice Couple sitcom on the screen, partly because Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal are a genuinely Nice Couple, but mainly because of the inspired interference from their snotty neighbour, Margo. [...] A meticulously groomed, flint-profiled ballbreaker with a taste for leopard-skin prints, Margo is the repository of every known prejudice common among the landless landed gentry - as bigoted as Alf Garnett but without his flexibility.

The Good Life (BBC1) is a civilised new comedy series with considerable charm and Richard Briers. There is a lot of bad meat sold in the comedy market, but I can recommend this as very fresh and pleasant.