Russell Brand's Ponderland

I enjoyed Russell Brand's Christmas Ponderland a lot more once I started to imagine the Daily Mail headlines it might provoke: 'Foul-Mouthed Brand in Virgin Mary Blasphemy', perhaps, for the sequence in which he imagined the Holy Mother as an Essex slattern, taking a very dim view of the accommodation.

Or 'Brand in Paedophile Joke Outrage' for the sequence in which he explored the dangers of Christmas Santas: 'I've been working in the grotto trade for quite a while,' he slurred, parodying a Santa manager. 'And I've learnt to get rid of anyone in the nonce line.'

Not that I wouldn't have enjoyed him without the pleasing fantasy of someone harrumphing themselves into an apoplexy. He's not to everyone's taste, as the BBC so painfully discovered, but he is funny.

The show itself is a fairly standard funny-clips-and-commentary deal, but it works because of Brand's wild energy. I particularly enjoyed his indignant dissection of Wizard's song 'I Wish It Could Be a Wombling Merry Christmas Every Day', a number he rightly arraigned for conceptual overkill. An hour of a Wombling Merry Christmas perhaps, but everyday? Surely not.

Russell Brand is a unique comedian who, despite his recent brush with controversy, wins the crowd over with his off-key charm.

It was difficult to view the first of the second series from an objective viewpoint - it became both the most complained about and most praised C4 show of the week, as the 'ban this filth' and the 'if you don't like it change the channel' brigades dragged their argument into a second week. In actual fact, it wasn't bad and featured some nice clips and comments from the dandy himself. Last week's episode on the subject of family was less sucessful, I think, and Brand's performance seemed rather forced. There is no doubt that Brand definitely has something, but I don't think we're seeing the best of him here.

Yes, he's an acquired taste. Yes, he looks like he has more teeth than is surely humanly possible, and yes he ca be filthier than a coal house door. But Russell Brand is a master of florid absurdities, which makes him arguably one of the most magnetic performers of his generation.

In this second Ponderland, Brand is voluble, silly, wildly witty and, yes, a bit naughty sometimes. Using as props a clutch of ostensibly dreary archive clips from what looks like the 1970s, Brand weaves tales of madness encompassing an obnoxious child and his bullied, cut-glass parents, a girl who can't stop sneezing with a mum who looks like Radiohead's Thom Yorke and a three-year-old on a motorcycle.

Jim Shelley Review

From the awful, awkward, title to the tired, unambitious concept, this was dismal.

It's been a terrible week for popular, wild-haired comedian Russell Brand. After he and Jonathan Ross left lewd messages on actor Andrew Sachs' voicemail during a Radio 2 show, more than 18,000 complaints pushed him into parting company with the BBC.

Inevitably, the tabloid furore over 'Sachsgate' boosted the return of Russell Brand's Ponderland to 1 million viewers for the start of its second series.

Besides a better set, the bedrock of Ponderland's format remained the same: Brand introduces a funny clip from the TV archives, the footage is played to a live studio audience, and Brand finally dissects the clip by spinning it into a meandering, surreal few minutes of iffy stand-up. Some of it works, most of it doesn't. I've always found Brand an odd TV presence (his shark's grin, his big hair, those tight trousers), and much prefer his anarchic, playful radio persona without that visual distraction. It's just an ironic pity radio gave him enough rope to hang himself with, isn't it.

The BBC has suspended all Russell Brand-related activities for the foreseeable future. Assuming your hunger for Brand hasn't been entirely assuaged lately, the sole remaining source is Russell Brand's Ponderland, in which his customary rants are structured around random snippets of old news footage on a weekly theme, which, last night, was pets.

I'd call myself an admirer of Brand, if at times a reluctant one, but I don't think this format suits him. Either the stories are too bland for his outrage (an elderly aristocrat who dyes his pigeons primary colours) or the outrage is ready-made (an American woman who had had an affair with her dog and was now eyeing up her pony). Interesting to note in the closing credits, though, that the production company that makes it is called Vanity, and its logo is a cartoon of a naked man standing over a mirror and playing with his willy. What you see is what you get.

After his inexplicably offensive radio broadcast, Russell Brand's Ponderland returned to show that the best of him is his surrealism and the worst is his sneering. In his autobiography and the interviews surrounding it he said that the proper butt of a comedian's jokes is himself. When you start laughing at other people's expense, he explained, you have to examine your motives. It sounded commendably idealistic at the time, but, boy, does it ring hollow now.

We didn't like Brand even before his stupidity cost a fine lady (the controller of Radio 2) her job by bragging about his sex life (who'd have him? not us - but lots of desperate wannabe girls, it seems). So when we say this programme is puerile, distasteful rubbish, it's not with a brainless Daily Mail-like chip on our shoulders.

Given that it contained two of my favourite phenomena, namely Russell Brand and psychic cats, it's odd to report that Russell Brand's Ponderland only fitfully tickled my whiskers.

Maybe it was because the peerless Harry Hill's TV Burp does the clip'n'mix style of comedy so well or maybe Brand was fitting in between Hollywood movies, pestering Andrew Sachs and resigning from the BBC (my nomination for non-scandal of the year) but there were times when his bestial riffing - his subject was pets - felt a tad forced.

Still, even when Brand is only purring on low gas he's still worth a sniff, ripping ribald laughs out of a scary woman who'd become rather too fond of her dog and a suicide pact involving a parrot. But for every good gag there was one he should have dumped in the litter tray.