The Armstrong & Miller Show

If, like Ant and Dec, you've never quite established which is which, let me clear it up for you - Alexander Armstrong is the one who did the Pimms' ads while Ben Miller was the creepy civil servant in Primeval and starred in that sitcom with Sarah Alexander, The Worst Week of My Life. After some very dubious opening titles involving dodgy dancing, there are a surprising number of funny sketches, many of them rather risque for BBC1, including splendid skewering of those 'readers emails' bits on breakfast news programmes.

When this show started, I thought we'd been transported back ten years - Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller were on the screen together, for a start, but the opening credits also seemed incredibly old-fashioned. Indeed, some would say that the very idea of a sketch show is pretty much passed its sell-by date in any case; that those sublime final Fast Show specials should have marked the genre's end.

But no, Armstrong and Miller are ploughing ahead regardless, and good on 'em. It's always hard to judge a sketch show from its first epsiode, as there'll inevitably be a few sketches which don't appeal, and some characters won't even have been introduced yet. But on the evidence we have so far, I'd give this a tentative thumbs up.

I can't pretend that the laughs were constant throughout this episode, and there were a couple of sketches which you felt you'd seen somewhere before, but when Armstrong and Miller let their imaginations run into darker territory, you could see definite potential for a successful series.

Alexander Armstrong interview

Alexander Armstrong tells The Telegraph about the joys of returning to the classic comedy sketch show and his favourite Friday night TV.

This late-90s sketch series has been resurrected in the BBC's autumn schedule. Watch it - it's deftly written, expertly performed, different, original and, well, good.