Victoria Wood (I)

If you're of an age where June Whitfield is best known for playing Jennifer Saunder's mum in Absolutely Fabulous, or even as "that woman from Doctor Who". This is a lovely insight into the Queen Mum of Comedy (Victoria Wood, you may remember from last Monday, already has the title of the Queen of Comedy).

June takes us on this trip down her memory lane. She made her West End debut during the Blitz and became a household name in the 1950s radio comedy Take It From Here, which at its peak attracted 22 million listeners.

But to many she will always be Terry Scott's long-suffering wife in Terry And June. Prior to the documentary is another chance to see the 1985 Christmas special of that show and also relive the moment Michael Aspel surprised June with the big red book in This Is Your Life. And at 10pm is an episode of Absolutely Fabulous, a term that could have been coined to describe June herself.

Victoria Wood's Midlife Christmas (BBC1, Thursday), nine years in the coming and worth the wait, was just as good as Morecambe and Wise. Every sketch was polished till it shone, right down to the big finish, a Busby Berkeley production number where bespectacled blokes in beige woollies and their wives in underwired undies danced exhilaratingly to Let's Do It.

In an extended sketch, Bo Beaumont (Julie Walters), an actress whose career had been all downhill since she appeared as Mrs Overall in a low-budget soap, and her dowdy, devoted assistant, Wendy (Victoria Wood), went through a series of disastrous TV auditions from I Am a Celebrity (based on a Japanese endurance game) to Dancing On Ice with Torvill and Dean (memorable for Julie Walters extraordinary legs, collapsible as sugar tongs). We left them at home enjoying When Gastric Bands Wear Out.

Another sketch, Lark Pies to Cranchesterfield, the sepia-tinted tale of a poor flitcher and his daughter, Araminty, who left home to better herself in the post office ("Our Araminty's going to 'ave 'er 'air straightened!") caught programmes like Cranford and Victorian Farm Christmas full in the small of the back. Much as the Manchester express caught Bessie ("Cow on the line!") as she grazed unaware on the railway track in Cranford.

Victoria Wood, God bless her, had a crack at Lark Rise to Candleford in her Christmas Eve special, Victoria Wood's Midlife Christmas, packaged and presented as a kindly gift to middle-aged couch potatoes. The target was a whale in a barrel, frankly, but there were still some fine jokes, including the scene in which Cranchesterford's teenagers exchanged embroidery text messages, stitching like fury and then handing the frame over to a nearby urchin to deliver. There were also some terrible jokes, though knowingly and lovingly handcrafted to be terrible, so that it didn't matter. Given its content, the line "I could have been a corn tender", uttered by the family paterfamilias when he wistfully recalled his unfulfilled ambition to go into the seed trade, was surely an unbeatable candidate for corniest gag of the Christmas break. Julie Walters was on good form too as Bo Beaumont, fruitlessly struggling to build public presence after years of playing Mrs Overall in Acorn Antiques. She walked out of Strictly Come Dancing because she couldn't master the three-step warm-up Anton du Beke tried to teach her, was passed over for a new Delia series because her signature dish - crackermole, a sardine on a Tuc cracker - didn't appeal, and pulled out of Who Do You Think You Are? when it becomes clear that she was going to have to reveal her true name and date of birth.

Victoria Wood's Midlife Christmas - how was it for you?

Her return to television has been hotly anticipated. But did Victoria Wood's Christmas show live up to expectations?

Even devotees of BBC1's cute historical drama Lark Rise to Candleford would admit that it's deliciously spoofworthy, what with its myriad of quaint Victorian niceties and arch dialogue. So it will surprise no one that the masterly Victoria Wood presents Lark Pies to Cranchesterford as part of her much-anticipated Christmas special, telling the touching story of young Araminty, who leaves her rural hamlet for a job in the Post and Potato Office.

Midlife Christmas promises to be a real treat for anyone who thinks Wood has been away from television for too long. Yes, she did Housewife 49 (very successfully), but that was a drama and Wood is queen of the sharp, pitch-perfect sketch show.

Here she looks stern as Sir Alan Sugar's sidekick Margaret Mountford in an Apprentice send-up, and we revisit Bo Beaumont (Julie Walters), the pretentious actress who plays Mrs Overall in Acorn Antiques. Guests include Delia Smith, Torvill and Dean, Anton du Beke and Reece Shearsmith.

How BBC bosses ruined Christmas for Victoria Wood

Victoria Wood is "furious" with the BBC after her seasonal TV special was relegated from a "promised" prime-time Christmas Day slot on BBC One, it can be disclosed.

Victoria Wood does not appeal to everyone but she does have a large and devoted following - almost a cult - which includes my mother-in-law, whose enthusiasm is undimmed by dementia. "Christmas," says Wood, "can be a difficult time for those struggling with that bonnet-free wasteland between the last Lark Rise and the next Cranford" - and so she steps in to fill the gap with Lark Pies to Cranchesterford, the heartwarming story of a young girl who leaves her rural hamlet for a job in the Post and Potato Office. In among the sketches are personal-injury commercials, unlikely sporting events and a dance number in which the midriff bulge is given the Busby Berkeley treatment. She will be joined by long-time collaborator Julie Walters alongside Delia Smith and Torvill and Dean.

Wood to star in Christmas special

Comedienne Victoria Wood is returning to BBC One for a one-off special at Christmas, it has been announced.

The BBC has launched its Grey Expectations season, dedicated, as they mistily phrase it, to "the twilight years". Eighty-seven-year-old Liz Smith goes on a cruise. George Melly and John Mortimer are resurrected. And, keeping the theme alive, if that is the word, Susie Dent explains in Radio Times the meaning of the phrase "to kick the bucket". (Do not read this if you are fond of pigs.) Comfort yourself with the thought that you have the last laugh. You don't have to pay a TV licence.

The season started with Getting On (BBC4), a comedy set in a geriatric ward, which happily proved excellent. It is shot in documentary style by Peter Capaldi. All colour is leached out of the ward except a haze of institutional blue. Voices, almost ad libbing, overlap.

The patients seem set, with some spirit, on dying despite the apathetic efforts of the staff. These are Nurse Kim Wilde (Jo Brand), the lowest form of life on the ward after the lino, Sister Flixter (Joanna Scanlan), drowning in paperwork, and Dr Pippa Moore (Vicki Pepperdine), a masterpiece of tinny insincerity. Dr Moore's real passion in life is her collection of faeces ("There is a faecal deposit on that chair." "I'm on top of that"). These three wrote the script ensuring a fair supply of jokes per person. Matron is a martinet of the old school, except he is a man. And horse sense is in inverse ratio to seniority.

The first patient out of the trap is Lily, who dies on her 87th birthday as Sister Flixter is holding her hand and chuckling over her mobile. She leaves behind a large coffee cake baked by her sister, Connie. "Do you think she really wants to have her dead sister's cake back?" asks Nurse Wilde, slavering slightly. "Oh, I'm sure she does. She'll enjoy that with a cup of tea later," says Sister Flixter, fairly firmly. Connie, however, proves elusive, and they are polishing off the cake themselves when a pale, defeated face appears in the glass of the door. A Connie if ever I saw one. Sister Flixter breaks the sad news through a hail of cake crumbs, and Nurse Wilde offers a glass of water, hiding her own slice of cake behind the door jamb. It is what Lily would have wanted. Probably.

It turns out that the old Asian lady, chattering incessantly, is saying, "I want to die. Please kill me", and the nicely spoken lady with terminal MS is looking forward to a holiday in Zurich. "Oh, that's a lovely city. You'll enjoy yourself there," said Dr Moore with shining insincerity - before doing a double take and making a panic-stricken call to Dignitas.

Curiously, it reminded me of Dinnerladies, which Victoria Wood wanted shot as this is: naturalistically. It is very female and unfazed by death.

All I want for Christmas is Victoria Wood

The thought of Victoria Wood's return to the BBC Christmas schedules is enough to get me excited at the height of summer.