Tony Hancock

Episodes one and two might be a slow burn, establishing the No Heroics universe in the same way that the early Friends episodes worked to acclimatise us to the improbably perfect world of six Gotham singletons. By the third instalment though, the hapless heroes are established as a superior sitcom characters that deserve a spot in the pantheon of loveable loser comedy that stretches from Tony Hancock to David Brent.

Packed with in-jokes for the fanboys, and perfectly normal jokes for the rest of us, No Heroics looks like a superior sitcom that will keep the long autumn nights safe for Truth, Justice, and the Comedy Way.

Although everyone gets his or her own punch lines, Lee responds to almost everything with a joke - we're meant to see it as a half-charming character defect - and so there's one every few lines when he's around. That relentlessness is eventually funny in itself - it's the Henny Youngman Effect, it wears you down. The pace is rapid and the tone is dry, and the rhythms and melodies of the jokes are particularly English and at times seem to jump back 50 years to the days of Tony Hancock and Kenneth Horne.

Hancock and Joan (BBC4) was not worthy of him. So much in his last spiralling years was not worthy of TV's greatest comedian.

Jack Dee's back with a second series of his (written with Pete Sinclair) hugely enjoyable BBC2 sitcom Lead Balloon.

Dee's portrayal of cantankerous, middle-aged comedian Rick Spleen has more than a touch of a media-class Tony Hancock to it - a character whose talent for digging himself into holes is second only to a grave-digger's.

One of the main joys of Lead Balloon is its small cast of supporting characters, comprising Rick's supremely patient wife (Raquel Cassidy), staggeringly vague daughter Sam (Antonia Campbell-Hughes), their permanently unheppy Polish home help Magda (brilliantly played by Anna Crilly) and his far-smarter co-writer Marty (Sean Power).

Even as minor a role as over-familiar local cafe owner Michael (Tony Gardner) is a perfectly formed, fully drawn character.

Every one of them was on top form, producing a just about flawless half hour of delightfully miserablist comedy. Lead Balloon is sure to go down well again this winter.

Hancock's World (BBC1) looked over his shoulder at the fifties, which were waving there. John Peel sat in a simulacrum of Hancock's bedsitter, a rhapsody in 15 different shades of beige, as if someone had emptied a vacuum bag over it all.

Last night, Hancock's World (BBC2) brought us an affectionate reminder of the man in his prime, with a compilation full of his futile rebellions against the austerity of post-war Britain, and his grandiose dreams of rising above his humble station in life. [...] It's easy to make a dog's dinner when editing archive-based shows (look no further than the Carry On compilations for proof of that), but Chris Tonge's timing was faultless throughout, resulting in yet another excellent comedy biography from BBC North, celebratory without being sentimental.

Hancock (BBC1), long and flaccid, was unworthy of the lad. There was a moment at the end when you thought that Alfred Molina, if he had been allowed to perform straight to camera, might have raised that obstreperous, baffled ghost.

But the Great Christmas Discovery came listening to the usual Golden-Oldie Comedy repeats - this time, two editions of the Hancock Half-Hour. They survive better, I suspect, than many others, though the audience laughter is irritatingly intrusive. But Hancock's persona is a genuine comic invention, and, listening again, I realised something else: Hancock is Basil Fawlty's Dad.

It is possible for instance, to analyse Thames's two-hour-long old film "The Rebel." But I find the attempt rather like trying to fillet a fishfinger.

But he [Tony Hancock] is squandering his strongest point in this current series. Instead of subtle characterisation and inspired soliloquy he is giving us an almost second-hand characterisation from a decidedly second-rate script.