Roy Barraclough

Are You Being Served serves more of the same

The old show was never a critics' favourite - despite our howls about these comedy rehashes being sacrilegious grave-robbing. But it had a kind of bravery; the passing of the Sexual Offences Act 1967 decriminalising gay sex was within recent memory, and living together was still 'living in sin' in the provinces. Its knowing primness was clever - a huge wink to the fourth wall of the masses that although the outré characters seemed naughty, and Mr Humphries got into scrapes with a wide array of young men, he was never explicit about them. But the world has moved on - Kim Kardashian's bum failed to break the internet and against shows like Catastrophe, this looks more than passé.

TV preview: Are You Being Served?, BBC1

So let's face it, this does nothing new but does the old thing pretty well.

Les Dawson: An Audience with That Never Was (ITV) was a not-terribly-snappily titled tribute, timed to mark the 20th anniversary of the much-loved comic's death. It told the story of the TV special Dawson was a fortnight away from recording when he died and attempted to recreate it using a 3D projection. The hologram was billed as "staggeringly realistic" and perhaps it was if you were in the same room. On TV, it merely looked like a cut-out image of Dawson wearing an unnaturally bright blue jacket and a low hairline, standing strangely still and occasionally moving jerkily.

Instead this was a glorified clip show. Venerable figures like Bruce Forsyth, Cilla Black and Ken Dodd sat in beige hotel suites, going misty-eyed over their memories. The celebrity audience watching the hologram's performance were noticeably one notch below - more the level of Debbie McGee and Lionel Blair. And those were two of the more familiar faces. Despite the presence of Dawson's widow and daughter, who were visibly moved, this still felt like a macabre cash-in. A tribute to Dawson would have been fine without a shoddy attempt to "bring him back to life".

The show was rescued by Dawson himself, whose wit rang down the decades. He rattled out mother-in-law gags and gurned with that rubbery bulldog face. We heard how he was an accomplished musician and frustrated poet, hence his artfully off-key piano-playing and relish for florid language. Best of all, there were copious clips of his "Cissie Braithwaite and Ada Shufflebotham" routines with Roy Barraclough, the cross-dressed pair gossiping like fishwives and silently mouthing more "delicate" words, before hitching up their ample bosoms. Cissie and Ada really were three-dimensional.

Roy Barraclough interview

Former Coronation Street star Roy Barraclough turns up in BBC1 drama Last Tango In Halifax this week. The veteran actor tells What's On TV all about his new role and reminisces about his Corrie days as Rovers landlord Alex Gilroy...