Tony Robinson (II)

The setting - a small-scale circus - is colourful and original. The characters are fun. The cast, which includes Tony Robinson, Sophie Thompson, Ruth Madoc and John Thomson, is comprised of rock solid comedy pros who deliver the goods. It contains gently romantic elements which are rather sweet...

Truth be told though, I didn't find it funny. With one or two exceptions, the gags are limp and lumbered with punchlines Nostradamus probably saw coming. Moreover, it has as its star Amanda Holden, who totally fails to deliver any kind of performance through the mask that is her face.

The Hi-de-Hi! fan in me wanted to like Big Top (BBC1), the unashamedly 70s-style sitcom with Amanda Holden and Ruth Madoc and John Thomson, but it was just unashamedly lame. Surely if you have a circus comedy, the challenge is to create the world's first funny clown? Would putting ferrets down his trousers help? No it wouldn't. I couldn't believe Tony Robinson (Erasmus, the odd-job man) spent all those years of training on Blackadder and those archaeology programmes for this.

When I was a child, wintry Sunday evenings meant watching Last of the Summer Wine while eating my supper, snuggled up to the radiator. It wasn't so much the thrill-a-minute antics that held me in thrall as the gentle rhythms of Peter Sallis's voice, later employed to such wonderful effect by Aardman. "More cheese, Gromit?" Certainly, but if you don't mind, I'll stick to the Stinking Bishop rather than the terrible stench wafting over from Big Top.

One can only imagine that the BBC commissioners are hoping to recreate the feeling of warmth engendered by Cleggy, Compo and Foggy with this throwback of a comedy, and the cheese gauge is certainly set on full fat - but the gags are never more than inanely mild.

To judge by her hotpants and hunting jacket, Amanda Holden must be the ringmistress of a circus whose acts we never see but which sounds, from behind the scenes, where the action takes place, frankly, rubbish, despite an all-star cast. The Thompson twins, Sophie (of EastEnders, and, erm, sister of Emma fame) and John (Cold Feet and Coronation Street, though admittedly a Thomson without the "p") are married circus clowns - Helen and Geoff - who, we are constantly told by Erasmus (Tony Robinson, in an odd-job role I could never quite put my finger on), would bring more joy to the assembled crowds by leaving the ring rather than finishing their act. Ruth "Hi-De-Hi!" Madoc finally drains any goodwill her campers might still hold for her as a demanding grande dame who can't keep her dancing dogs on a leash; and Bruce Mackinnon harks back to the benign world of Alf Garnett as the idiotic acrobat Boyco, from Eastern Europe. (Thank you for the geographic tip, BBC press release.) Bruce who? Oh, come now, Bruce Mackinnon... you know, that one from The Office and The Catherine Tate Show. Still no? Me neither.

Sorry, did I say benign world? I meant disturbingly racist world. Eastern European, is he? He'll probably have a funny accent. Oh, he does. And he's casually homophobic in a nonsensical way? ("That homosexual pop group ... Coldplay.") Of course he is. But that's OK. Because he's Eastern European. Any particular country? Apparently not. But then, as stupid and offensive as Boyco's character is, it's no worse than the rest of this trite bunch. Did you not know that everyone who works in a circus is dim?

One could dwell on the curiosity of Holden's Botoxed face not allowing her a full range of gurning (or, indeed, any expression at all); on a paucity of imagination (one of Madoc's dogs is called Fido. Fido, for goodness' sake); on the offensive and pathetic punchlines (Geoff: "When we come in, you're supposed to play Looney Tunes, not ..." Erasmus: "... Hitler's speech to the 1935 Nuremberg Rally." Do we really need the date as detail - in case we thought it was a different rally? Is that speech even comedy fodder?); on the repeated attempts to get a laugh from a story straight out of a Victorian music hall about sticking ferrets down trousers ("Looks like they had a ball." Ho ho!). But to go on like that would be cruel.

Amanda Holden goes back to sitcoms to headline Big Top, a new BBC1 comedy set in a travelling circus. Holden plays Lizzie the Ring Mistress, which calls to mind a smutty joke the show would never contemplate tackling. No, we're in family-friendly sitcom territory for this series by writer Daniel Peak (My Hero), so it's all very innocuous and frivolous stuff that kids and the elderly will find amusement in. Predictably, it's taken a battering in the press for its old-fashioned sensibilities, but such critics forget the fact that a large portion of the British public just aren't interested in the cutting-edge comedy offered by The Thick Of It and Peep Show. A lot of people just want something colourful, inoffensive and cheeky, with signposted jokes and a few famous faces (John Thomson, Tony Robinson) thrown into the mix. It's not to my taste and I won't be watching a second more, but I've seen a lot worse, and some of the gags made me smile with a groan behind my lips. Plus, there's always the sight of Amanda Holden in hotpants if all else fails.

Big Top, a new sitcom set in a travelling circus, is one of those programmes that get you wondering about the commissioning process. You'll need something to entertain you while it's on and speculating about the way it came into being will do as well as anything, unless you've got a dog that's overdue for a combing or some socks to pair up. One assumes that the performers' names came first on the pitch document. One certainly hopes that they came first on the pitch document, since the idea that it was sold on the essential concept and a sample of the writing seems implausible, to say the least. We've thought of a vehicle for Amanda Holden, somebody said, and what's more it's a role that will make it feasible for her to wear hotpants and black stockings nearly all the time. And if you bite there's a good chance that we can bolt on John Thompson, Tony Robinson and Ruth Madoc. How's that for belt-and-braces coverage? Cold Feet, Blackadder and a dab of Hi-De-Hi! behind the ears.

"So what's the sit?" asks the commissioning editor. Down-at-heel circus, replies the pitcher, run by Lizzie, a mildly over-controlling ringmistress who's the only grown-up on payroll. There's a terrible husband-and-wife clown act, a depressive East European acrobat with a crush on Holden's character, a cynical soundman called Erasmus (Tony Robinson) and the self-seeking Welsh dame who does a performing-dog routine. Oh, and it's written by Daniel Peak, who wrote Not Going Out, so there's a bit of pedigree there. Lot of running gags, lot of slapstick, comedy of types. Think Dad's Army with red noses and spandex tights. And then, one guesses - since it's not very often these days that sitcoms get green-lit without jumping through this particular hoop - there would have been a rehearsed reading of the script, so that a collection of executives could mull over its prospects. And it's at this point that speculation hits an obstacle. How could they sit in the presence of gags this lame and character depiction this arbitrary and not say no?

It does go out at 7.30pm, so it's possible that the younger audience will be advanced as an alibi. It seems heartless to use children as a human shield in this way though, and surely they deserve better than gags about ferrets down trousers and punch lines that audibly creak as they're winched into place. "I was so worried that you'd fail us on the raw sewage round the hot-dog stand," blurted out Lizzie when the health and safety inspector gave her the all clear, a line that not even Helen Mirren could have made psychologically plausible. And without an underlying psychological plausibility (the urgent cartoon drives that you'll always find in Hi-De-Hi! and Dad's Army if you dig deep enough) it just isn't comic. That line isn't an inadvertent revelation - it's hopelessly, mechanically advertant, only there to be funny. In the end, an exchange between Plonky the clown and Erasmus offered the best verdict: "If we're so terrible why do we get a big cheer when we finish?" "I think you've answered your own question there."

Amanda Holden stars as a ringmaster in this Daniel Peak-scripted, circus-based sitcom whose impressive cast also includes John Thomson, Tony Robinson and Ruth "Hi-De-Hi!" Madoc. There are so few primetime sitcoms nowadays that the experience of watching one feels surreally olde worlde - the easily tickled audience who giggle like loons even at the straight lines, foreign accents regarded as inherently amusing and jokes about a ferret down a clown's trousers "having a ball". It's almost in Mitchell and Webb's Send for Hennimore territory - like a precise pastiche of bad British comedy.

Reports of the death of the British sitcom have been greatly exaggerated. With Last of the Summer Wine making its 31st series, My Family its 11th and even Reggie Perrin recommissioned, somebody's watching. And they're the same viewers likely to warm to this new family-friendly sitcom set in a two-bit provincial circus.

It stars Amanda Holden as ringmaster Lizzie, who struggles to control a gaggle of fading acts, including a wacky ageing performer (Hi-De-Hi!'s Ruth Madoc) and a pair of hopeless clowns (John Thomson and Sophie Thompson). The script by relative newcomer Daniel Peak features dog-napping plots and ferrets-down-trousers gags rather than the observational humour that's so hip these days, but it draws upon the rich tradition of earlier comedies - from Dad's Army to Steptoe and Son - in which the humour often came from characters who are compelled by their situation to do peculiar, funny things. Spirited performances by a decent cast go some way toward making up for the dated set-up. Baldrick himself, Blackadder's Tony Robinson, turns up as the circus's wisecracking accounts man, and Holden propels the action (she was, after all, a perky comic actress in Kiss Me Kate and The Grimleys before Britain's Got Talent and Botox took over). Launching any new sitcom is a bit of a highwire act, but audiences may roll up to this one.

You won't have seen many adverts for Amanda Holden's Big Top, BBC1, 7.30pm, because the BBC are embarrassed about it. Correctly. It's worse than it sounds. That's worse than a sitcom featuring Amanda, Tony Robinson and Ruth Madoc in a circus sounds. Think on that.

With Britney Spears and Take That going down the circus route for their recent albums, suddenly the big top's back in vogue. But even if it didn't feature Ruth Madoc as one half of a dog act (the other half being a West Highland terrier called Dave) the ghost of Hi-de-Hi! hovers over this show.

Like holiday camps, a circus - where this is set - is like a sheltered environment where all kinds of eccentrics can live in safety, at arms' length from the outside world. The genial folk at Maestros appear to have been preserved in aspic from some time in the 60s and their biggest star seems to be Amanda Holden in a ringmaster's outfit.

Also on the bill are Tony Robinson as a grumpy caretaker named Erasmus, leotard-wearing Boyco, (Bruce MacKinnon) and John Thomson and Sophie Thompson (not related) as a pair of clowns, Jeff and Helen.

The gentle comedy tonight revolves around some ferrets down a clown's trousers and a visit from a health and safety officer - who's played by a seriously bemused-looking Patrick Baladi.

Shown on Christmas Day last year, this 60-minute documentary was made to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the sitcom. Rowan Atkinson talks about the development of his character, Edmund Blackadder, plus there are interviews with the core cast (Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Tony Robinson) and writing team (Ben Elton and Richard Curtis).