Warren Clarke

As the assisted-suicide sitcom faces its final curtain, Warren Clarke puts in a guest turn as world-weary has-been actor Nigel Banks, now crooning at the posh country hotel where Scott (Blake Harrison) drags his mates to help him get over being dumped.

Joey (Ben Heathcote) wants to help put Banks out of his misery with the McFlurry of Death but gets into a heated debate with Scott over the difference between mercy and murder. As sitcoms go it's, well, different.

Liam (Will Mellor) is pretty fed up with his humdrum lifestyle, while his younger brother Kevin (Alex Carter) seems to have it all. Meanwhile, Jim (Warren Clarke) has found his inner Picasso and has started churning out lamentable portraits of the family. The humour seems to have picked up in tonight's episode, although it's still heavily propped up by canned laughter.

This family sitcom might be all about staying in, but as series two opens Liam and Caroline have been to the pictures. They return to find a man in a Barbara Windsor mask in their front room, about to make off with a laptop. It's only when they manage to restrain him that they realise the burglar is an old schoolmate of Liam's - though Corrie viewers might recognise him as the murderous John Stape. Their almost quick-witted reaction makes them the very mildest of vigilantes.

Also passing through the Flynn household is Chloe's manipulative new friend Megan, who can persuade an adult to adopt her in under a minute. Her snivelly tricks work on Liam's dad Jim (Warren Clarke), though he's more interested in the large cod he's clutching. Cue the fish puns - and a reassurance that, although In with the Flynns is pretty broad, it's not total carp.

I was somewhat dreading having to watch this, fearing it was going to be something akin to Life of Riley and other unfunny nonsense. But while In With the Flynns is not the funniest sitcom ever made, it does have its moments.

The first thing which strikes the viewer is the way the show is filmed. While this show was made in front of a studio audience, the filming looks much more realistic than a programme like Life of Riley or My Family. When you first see it, it doesn't feel quite right, but you soon get used to it.

As a pre-watershed TV sitcom there is very little in the way of offensive material. The closest to anything really disgusting was one of the sons in the family admitting to eating a pasty from a bin, which for me was one of the best bits, as well as admitting he got free soup from people who were serving it to the homeless.

Other decent comic moments included the eldest member of the family, Jim (Warren Clarke), going on a date with a woman he met in a car boot sale - but still making the woman pay £1.50 for a scart lead.

However, for me the best and worst moments were the flashbacks. This was an interesting comedic device, synonymous with In With the Flynns writers like Daniel Peak (who also employs similar cutaways in Mongrels). The best comic moment was a bit of slapstick involving an eyebrow piercing. The worst, however, was when the other son, who was being bullied, walked into a lamppost - which was clearly fake.

In With the Flynns isn't going to set the comic world alight, and many critics will be rallying against it, but in terms of pre-watershed sitcoms, it isn't the worst show in recent years.

A mainstream, family-based sitcom billed as "warm" and "authentic" sets all the alarm bells ringing. This new six-parter written by Daniel Peak is a kind of aspirational working-class companion to the bourgeois settings of Outnumbered and My Family, but if anything, it's even more flat-footed. It feels incredibly dated, from the staging to the characters to the jokes. Will Mellor and Niky Wardley are the parents working extra shifts to take the family on holiday; Warren Clarke is the best bit as the grouchy grandfather looking for romance.

Warren Clarke interview

Warren Clarke co-stars with Will Mellor, Niky Wardley and Craig Parkinson in a Manchester-based family sitcom, In With The Flynns...

The importance of seizing life's windows of opportunity was not lost on the team behind the Beeb's other post-Christmas winner [aside from Toast], Just William. Not that it would have taken a casting director of genius to realise that Daniel Roche - the 11-year-old actor who played Ben in Outnumbered - was born to play William Brown, Richmal Crompton's schoolboy anti-hero.

With his natural curls and even more natural scowl, Roche brought Brown to life as no other child actor has before. But what really elevated Simon (Men Behaving Badly) Nye's adaptation were the moments inbetween young William's adventures and the painstaking attention to detail of its early 1950s period setting.

With an adult cast including Rebecca Front and Daniel Ryan as the long-suffering senior Browns, and Warren Clarke and Caroline Quentin as the nouveau riche Botts, Nye's four episodes - perhaps taking inspiration from The Simpsons - fully appreciated that there was room here for all the characters to manoeuvre. There were storylines involving William's sister Ethel, subplots based around the staff at William's school, visits from members of the extended Brown family and, of course, the sthpectacularly sthpoilt Violet Elizabeth.

The sharpness of the script was evident from episode one, in which William's brother Robert, newly obsessed with Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones, had this exchange with his mother: Robert [mumbling]: "I need to go somewhere." Mrs Brown [not looking up]: "If you're passing the shop could you buy a loaf of bread?" Robert: "No, I need to escape. I'm going to join a biker gang." Mrs Brown: "Righto. Maybe you should borrow Mr Nuttley's motorbike and see if you like it first."

Who of us brought up in the stifling atmosphere of the suburbs will not have had a similar early life exchange, in which a burning passion is reduced, with a seen-it-all-sigh, to the status of hobby?

Thus, while Toast and Just William were both unashamedly nostalgic, both also carried off the crucial trick of ringing true to a 21st-century audience. Good writing, fine acting and a past (unlike the foreign country of Upstairs, Downstairs) that we can all remember and relate to.

It's not too much to ask for is it? And especially at a time of year when, for many of us, the televison screen is the window of opportunity in the corner of all of our living-rooms.

Outnumbered's bloodthirsty Ben is a William for our times, so the casting of actor Daniel Roche, so brilliant as the violence-obsessed middle child in the hit BBC1 sitcom, is perfect. The sublime Martin Jarvis, who is William to so many of us, thanks to his peerless readings of Richmal Crompton's tales on Radio 4, narrates a series of four stories (daily until New Year's Eve). Here William and the Outlaws first encounter insufferable Violet Elizabeth Bott, the be-ribboned, lisping brat who manipulates everyone with her threats to "thcweam and thcweam and thcweam until I'm thick". Warren Clarke and, particularly, Caroline Quentin have a whale of a time as Violet Elizabeth's vulgar, nouveau riche parents (dad is the Bott's Digestive Sauce magnate), while Rebecca Front and Daniel Ryan are sweetly forbearing as William's mum and dad. It's aimed at kids, but adults will have fun, too, if only as they look back fondly on a world where children could play outside for hours on end and the sun always seemed to shine.

William Brown truly is the boy who never grew up. Created by writer Richmal Crompton in 1922, William has remained 11 years old ever since, infuriating his teachers, embarrassing his mother, and forever trying to shake off the attentions of his spoilt brat of a neighbour, Violet Elizabeth Bott. His antics have already been adapted for television several times over.

This new treatment, written by Men Behaving Badly creator Simon Nye, opts to set the Just William stories in the Fifties - just far back enough to feel like a magical distant world to today's technology-obsessed children. William is played with gusto by Outnumbered's Daniel Roche, but it's the casting of the adults that brings the whole thing to life, especially Rebecca Front (The Thick of It) as William's permanently flustered mother, and Warren Clarke in the pantomime villain role as local condiment magnate Mr Bott (yes, his product really is called Bott Sauce). In this first episode of four to be screened over consecutive lunchtimes, the Bott family has just moved house, with Mr Bott taking a dim view of William's gang using his woods as a base. So William plots his revenge...

Comedy drama The Invisibles axed after one series

Comedy drama The Invisibles, starring Warren Clarke and Anthony Head, has been axed after just one series.