Robert Daws

Cabaret, satire and good fortune merged to create The Two Ronnies, as Roy Smiles points out in his excellent play Goodnight From Him. It charts the 20-year professional relationship of opposites Corbett and Barker through inventive reworkings of their most famous skits.

So, for instance, in a reprisal of the class sketch, Barker looks up to Cleese because although he has more money he cannot speak Latin or spell 'xenophobia'.

Aidan McArdle plays Corbett with the familiar, emphatic phrasing, while Robert Daws' Barker is reticent and unstarry, like the original.

After works about Spike Milligan, Tony Hancock and Dad's Army, writer Roy Smiles once again plunders Britain's comedy heritage for this play about Ronnie Corbett (Aidan McArdle) and Ronnie Barker (Robert Daws).

Smiles uses the device of one of Corbett's monologues and parodies of their sketches to explore the differences in the two men and how they first met. The re-creation of the sketches has a novelty value for those who remember them, but often only serve to remind us how good the original Ronnies were. And having to explain gags that worked on screen ("you've thrown your drink over me") is plain uncomfortable.

An interesting curiosity, but the uneven structure and wayward impersonations ultimately make it rather disappointing.

Here's a play about the friendship that grew between the two lead actors in Dad's Army, John Le Mesurier (played by Anton Lesser) and Arthur Lowe (Robert Daws), which began on the TV series and lasted all their lives. Playwright Roy Smiles switches between the letters the pair exchanged in the 1980s, remembering how they got to know each other making the show, and afterwards, showing why such different people remained such pals. Maybe part of it was the integrity of the David Croft and Jimmy Perry scripts which, 40 years on, still shine.

Five Rings can't utilise the element of surprise like the first episode did 12 months ago, but all the strong characters and understated yet charming writing is still present. The real difficulty many of the naysayers had with the programme at the start of the year was that it did not contain the same belly-laughs that OFAH did, but when taken for what it is (a gentle comedy drama), Rock and Chips still delivers low-key entertainment, cosy nostalgia and no small amount of wit.

Tonight's episode is set during Christmas of 1960. A very Inbetweenerish Del Boy has left school and started an apprenticeship at the university of life and street hawking. Watching James Buckley attempt to get girls into bed by faking a marriage proposal is eerily familiar of his other show and in templated sitcom fashion, he ends up stringing a couple of girls along. But Derek's petty tax misdemeanours and comic love-life are safely offset by his warm-hearted charm and an all-conquering love for his mother.

The same can not be said for his feckless old man, who has had his disability stopped ("I've been sacked from the dole!") and still hasn't realised how lucky he is to have a lady like Del's hot young mum. As before, Phil Daniels is brilliantly cast as a younger Granddad and Robert Daws is a treat in his fleeting reprisal of the sleazy self-pleasuring cinema boss, but we are also introduced to a couple of new characters, among them the much talked of Grandma Trotter. Yet despite some stiff competition, it is Nicholas Lyndhurst who steals the show - and Joan Trotter's heart - as the patrician but besotted super-criminal and father of Rodney. Just keep your fingers crossed that Freddie 'The Frog' Robdal doesn't end up back to the Scrubs. Reg Trotter is a tit.