John Bishop's Britain

The second series of John Bishop's Britain was, like the first, an excruciatingly anodyne blend of cheesy jokes and mildly risqué allusions that somehow manages to keep a Saturday night audience amused, or amused enough not to change the channel. The Liverpudlian comedian rolled out a set based on nostalgia comedy - remember how women threw knickers at Tom Jones, remember when we "copped off to Shalamar". One might be tempted to add another to his list of bygone things: remember the once-great Saturday night TV comedy show.

John Bishop's Britain review

The subjects of music and fashion are on John Bishop's agenda this evening, subject matter bursting with stand-up clichés. Skits about middle-aged men's bad dance moves and the glory of vinyl LPs are older than comedy itself, but the Liverpudlian just about manages to get away with these ancient chestnuts.

I try hard to resist John Bishop; he's loud, brash, coarse and crude. But, dammit, he always gets me in the end. I don't want to laugh, but, yes, there I go. He's good at cheery observation - a dirty version of Michael McIntyre with jokes invariably ending up somewhere below the waist. Like his final, elaborate gag that centres on an involuntary male physical reaction to an extended kissing scene when he starred in Skins. His leery stand-up routine is mixed with filmed contributions from members of the public and minor celebrities, who expound on topics, including this week Awful Music and Guilty Pleasures. Bishop, at his most laconic, does an excellent hatchet-job on U2's Bono at his most sanctimonious and there are extended routines about that old chestnut, men dancing at weddings, and the joys of taping music from the radio as a kid.

The idea of the series is to explore different facets of British culture via the means of reminiscing, re-enacting and no small amount of piss-taking, as John Bishop takes us on a self-deprecating tour of our own recent history.

Annoyingly, much of the history isn't quite recent enough to be recognisable to viewers under a certain age, since the programme's content is aimed squarely at the 30-something market.
If you like rap music and were born too late to become nostalgic when someone asks when you bought your first record, then this music and fashion themed opener was not for you.

Fortunately, the skits and stand-up were funny, while the host and his talking heads - a combination of famous faces and ordinary members of the public - were engaging and endearing.

It's not ground-breaking Saturday night television, but John Bishop's Britain is charming and self-effacing and, as such, quintessentially British.

Despite a slightly awkward format, this vehicle for the likeable Liverpudlian comic pulled in decent ratings of 4.2m when it debuted last year, hence this second series. It sees Bishop perform a stand-up set based on a theme, interweaving his own observations with input from celebrity guests and members of the public. Tonight he tackles music and fashion, telling tales of gig-going and style crimes. Eamonn Holmes and Freddie Flintoff confess their guilty musical pleasures, while MasterChef's Gregg "The Egg" Wallace shows why he belongs in the kitchen, not on the dancefloor.

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The BBC's latest experiment in light, family-friendly entertainment draws to a close tonight with this final episode of John Bishop's Britain, an occasionally funny show in which the Liverpudlian stand-up riffs on a given weekly theme - families, love and marriage, etc - with additional padding from celebrity guests, vox pop interviews with members of the public and short comedy sketches. Tonight's theme is holidays, which gives the charismatic Bishop the chance to air some decent material about his experiences venturing abroad with young children, interspersed with some considerably less amusing chitchat from the likes of Tara Palmer-Tomkinson.