Curb Your Judaism

Curb Your Judaism saw David Schneider ponder why Britain's Jewish comics often avoid looking to their religious background for material, unlike their opposite numbers across the pond.

This was a hotchpotch of a documentary with different contributors - among them David Baddiel, Matt Lucas and writers Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran - all offering their thoughts on why Jewish humour has largely stayed in the closet. Could it be the effect of political correctness? The performer's fear of being pigeonholed and not making the mainstream? It wasn't clear whether the programme sufficiently answered any of these questions. Perhaps placing the debate in some kind of historical and/or social context would have helped as well as hearing the thoughts of the American performers mentioned.

Peter Sellers, Sid James, Bud Flanagan. All Jewish. Who knew? I certainly didn't and it's just one fascinating tidbit unearthed by stand-up David Schneider as he explores why British Jewish comedy is not as successful as its American counterpart.

The most popular reason seems to be that British Jews were more likely to be assimilated into mainstream culture, though David Baddiel does come up with a far-fetched theory that the benefits of political correctness bypassed Jews, meaning that black and Asian people had comedy TV shows while Jews didn't.

The programme is scattered with wonderful Yiddish - "kvetching", "schmaltzy", "shiksa", "sheitel" - and offers a superb chance to hear Matt Lucas (yes, he's Jewish too) describe his plans for a sitcom about a Jewish family in great detail.