Mr And Mrs Smith

Mr and Mrs Smith's premise is resolutely domestic, revolving around a married couple, Annabelle and Will, seeking marriage guidance through a counsellor named Guy. A set-up that prompts neat flashbacks to the previous week's events. It had its moments, though, like Father Figure, was similarly short sighted in its vision of a couple hampered by their inability to communicate. My advice to Annabelle and Will? Take a holiday. Go skydiving. Ditch the usual routine. Sometimes a change of scene is all that's required.

Comedian Will Smith's self-penned starring role in this sitcom about a young married couple has gone from a hopeful but wobbly pilot in August 2010 to an impressive, well-written and smartly observed new series in 2012.

The scenes are split between a counselling session for the couple with an oleaginously smug therapist and glimpses into events at home that have led to these heart-to-hearts. It's unashamedly middle class and Middle England, but that does not stop it from being funny.

Happy Tuesdays: Mr and Mrs Smith

I listened to Will Smith's Mr and Mrs Smith the other day - part of the Happy Tuesdays season of pilots on Radio 4. It was a show about a married couple undergoing counselling, and starred Will Smith and Sarah Hadland. I rather liked it. In fact, I like it a lot.

And another Happy Tuesdays for Radio 4, this time from self-avowedly middle-class comic Will Smith. As with Everybody Quite Likes Justin last week, the script was funny, but let down by old-fashioned, stagy direction. There are talented people involved in all these pilots, but the producers seem to think we have never heard comedy before.

More meditations on love came from Mr and Mrs Smith in Radio 4's late night Happy Tuesdays slot, a series whose reviews thus far must have prompted some horribly unhappy Wednesdays. Written by Will Smith, who starred as the Conservative aide in The Thick of It, the scene was a marriage-guidance session. She was unsatisfied - he gave her a draining rack for their first anniversary - he was unsatisfactory: "I only feel like a man when I'm playing Call of Duty". Their romantic mini-break was predictably disastrous. It was, I suppose, the kind of humour you can multi-task to. Gently amusing, and Smith will undoubtedly go on to write slicker and faster material.

Things I learned recording my radio pilot

If you are married, and you write a show where you play a character going to marriage counselling who has your name, you can expect a few awkward conversations with people on the outer ring of your social circle.