Ronnie Corbett

Why I had a quite (but not great) good night from him

The idea sounded brilliant at the time: apply for tickets to a special show featuring a plethora of comedy guests to help mark the 80th birthday of the legendary Ronnie Corbett. What a great chance, thought I, to see one of my favourite comedy heroes of the last 40 years being celebrated with style, and in time for a Christmas broadcast too. Yes, The One Ronnie sounded a great night out. And yet, I couldn't shake the one thought running around in the back of my paranoia-filled brain: don't get your hopes up. And for the most part, my thought was justified.

Ronnie Corbett: young comics just want to shock

Ronnie Corbett, the veteran comic, has claimed he was frozen out of the BBC in favour of edgier performers and other channels because he refused to swear.

Director Michael Winterbottom conjured a pleasing blur of fact and fiction in The Trip, an improvised new comedy starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as versions of themselves on a tour of rural northern restaurants, supposedly for The Observer's magazine. Trying to keep it real made for a flattish sort of badinage to start with, but their personalities were eventually set jousting, Brydon with his impersonation of Ronnie Corbett over the scallops and soup, the antsy, sardonic Coogan mulish in his refusal to be amused.

Temperamentally, Coogan belongs to that class of comedian who would rather be thought a genius than a clown, but it wasn't long before the pair were into a rampant contest for best Michael Caine impression ("Shall I prepare the Batmobile, master Bruce?"). Coogan won it on finesse and followed up with a superb Anthony Hopkins as Captain Bligh, but you couldn't stop Brydon, who now hilariously had his teeth into Al Pacino (in Heat the movie and, less congruously, Heat the magazine) before morphing into a staccato Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Even Coogan was smiling.

I could have watched more, but they had the other diners to think about. Were they real or were they actors? The food looked real and the restaurant - the Inn at Whitewell, near Clitheroe - is real. It's even true (according to my wife, whose friend Jackie frequently sneaks off there for a quiet coffee) that you can't get a mobile signal. In an unexpectedly touching moment, we saw Coogan tramping up the darkening hill in the cold to phone his girlfriend, who was supposed to have come with him on the trip ("I wanted to show her the north - a piece of me...") but had gone home to America instead. I don't think she was real, though I could have believed she was. Perhaps he'll find happiness with Rob. They're an odd couple but quite perfect in a way.

Last week, likeable comedian Rob Brydon's main guest was Terry Wogan. This week it's Ronnie Corbett. Legends they may be, but Brydon is hardly seducing us with dynamic line-ups. His chat with a bemused Corbett is a disappointing mix of smut and silliness. Things continue to go downhill when Brydon submits glamorous singer Paloma Faith to a baffling Spanish-style serenade. A slice of stand-up from perky comedian Lucy Porter livens things up for a few minutes. But there's no escaping the general whiff of mediocrity.

The BBC deserve an ambivalent shrug for The Rob Brydon Show, which is, at best, objectively "alright". Faint praise is the dullest weapon in the critic's armory, but it's all this lighthearted chat show deserves.

Last time Brydon presented something in this vein he was in character as hapless cuckold Keith Barrett of Marion and Geoff renown. This time he's being himself, the likeable, witty, waspish Welshman whose eagerness to please is as endearing as it is occasionally overbearing - during his opening "banter with the audience" segment, I thought his unfunny Pingu impression was never going to end.

There is, to its credit, something pleasingly old-fashioned about the programme's format. Oddly, what it reminded me of most was - pace Wogan and Harty - Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge, starring Steve Coogan. But whereas that was a parody of traditional chatter-tainment, this is the real, undemanding deal.

So, a few gags, a sycophantic chat with a showbiz chum - David Walliams doing his lazy faux-camp schtick - a self-indulgent duet with a musical hero - Tom Jones - and a showcase for an up-and-coming comic - Tom Deacon, a nondescript child. And, inevitably, as many impressions as Brydon can cram in. If Jones' involvement was anything to go by, expect future guests to include others the host can "do". Ronnie Corbett is probably ironing his cravat as we speak.

Here's a fun game to play while watching Rob Brydon's new chat and variety show featuring David Walliams and Tom Jones - impression bingo! Tick them off as he does them to win a fabulous prize! Ronnie Corbett, Terry Wogan, Alec Guinness and, best of all, Tiny Man In A Box. Got them all? You win! Your prize is that you have just watched Rob Brydon's new chat and variety show featuring David Walliams and Tom Jones. And if you watched it after the new Paul O'Grady chat and variety show, may God have mercy on your soul.

Ronnie Corbett is the very special guest on David Mitchell's team tonight. It's a chance for host Rob Brydon to try out his favourite Corbett impression on the real thing and also an opportunity for a very happy Lee Mack to fulfil a childhood dream.

Corbett's presence - small though it is - is a huge part of the show which also sees Julian Clary attempting to explain why he's got a unicorn in his garden and David discussing his unusual childhood friendship with a bucket.

The other two panelists, Sarah Millican and Holly Walsh, may be less well-known but in such legendary company as this they more than keep up their end of the banter - adding up to another perfectly breezy ­half-hour.

The post-Watergate interviews between David Frost and Richard Nixon were first dramatised back in 2006 with Michael Sheen as the jet-setting talk-show host. So who better than Sheen to celebrate Frost's five decades in the media on both sides of the Atlantic in this one-off documentary? We hear from Frost himself who recalls a career that takes in That Was the Week That Was, The Frost Report and TV-am, while friends and colleagues, including Michael Parkinson and Ronnie Corbett, give their verdict on the only person to have interviewed the last seven US Presidents. The catchphrase may be much mimicked, and the softly-softly approach of more recent ventures like Breakfast with Frost has been criticised by some, but there's no denying the staying power of this giant of broadcasting.

Ian Davidson and Peter Vincent's delightful When the Dog Dies cast Ronnie Corbett as Sandy Hopper, a widower whose daughter and son-in-law are impatient for him to move out of his house - a move he has agreed to make "when the dog dies". The need, therefore, is to keep Henry - 116 in dog years - alive. This is a gentle, credit-crunch comedy for our times and Corbett is beautifully cast as the beleaguered oldie whose ungrateful offspring watch his every move like vultures. When he gets a sat-nav his daughter is horrified. "You shouldn't be spending money on that, there's already inheritance tax without you spending!" He is banned from burying the dog in the garden because, as his monstrous son-in-law tells him, "People won't buy the house with dead dogs everywhere". And when he graciously suggests, "we should all be singing from the same hymn sheet," the son-in-law ominously riposts, "We will soon Sandy."