Murder Most Horrid

Murder Most Horrid (BBC2), no great favourite of mine, turned up trumps with the story of Daisy (Dawn French), a soft-hearted abbatoir worker, who is mistaken for an executioner in South America. For reasons too curly to disentangle, she executes the entire government by mistake. Live on TV. This, as you might anticipate, is a roaring ratings success. As Daisy says "There hasn't been anything worth watching on telly recently."

Watching Murder Most Horrid (BBC2) proved to be a truly horrific way of killing half an hour and I soon fell into a childlike "are we nearly there yet?" state, as each woebegone minute crawled desolately by like a funeral. [...] Last night's offering, We All Hate Granny, was certainly not a suitable vehicle for comedy, nor would it have passed its horror MoT.