The Old Guys

The sitcom shuffles into a second series but if you're coming at it new, prepare yourself for a world that's a lot less subtle than that more famous creation from writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, Peep Show. The flaw this opener shows up is that the dialogue doesn't seem to sit right coming out of the mouths of the show's aged housemates. Still, we're in the safe hands of comic veterans Roger Lloyd Pack and Clive Swift of Keeping Up Appearances.

Moved to a new home on Friday nights, where it's much-needed, the second series of The Old Guys feels as comfortable as a pair of slippers.

Ironically, the first series suffered from the fact that it was created by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong. Their fans would have been expecting Peep Show for pensioners - and it certainly wasn't that.

It was more like Men Behaving Badly meets One Foot In The Grave. Its sense of humour might be cutting but it could never be described as cutting-edge, and it wasn't trying to be. It was safe, cosy and non-threatening - aimed firmly at the kind of viewers who loved Clive Swift as Hyacinth's husband in Keeping Up Appearances.

Series two finds Swift and Roger Lloyd Pack's flat-sharing Old Couple still lusting after their sexy but oblivious neighbour Sally (Jane Asher) and dismayed that she's found "another bloody boyfriend who isn't us". But there's a new woman on the scene - a librarian, played (improbable as it sounds) by Cherie Lunghi. You can already start to see Jane Asher's glamorous hackles rise and having a bit of competition (even for two men she's not remotely interested in) should put the cat among the pigeons.

This week Tom and Roy enter a pub quiz to prove that age hasn't shrunk their brain cells. And Tom's quest continues to underline how even though they might both be old, he's not as old as Roy. "You did National Service in Caterham," he points out. "I did acid in Wardour Street."

It may be Pensioners Behaving Badly, but I found the first series of this comedy from the writers behind Peep Show (predominantly Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, with this first episode written by Simon Blackwell) more enjoyable than the concept would indicate. Roger Lloyd Pack and Clive Swift bicker about everything, not least their mutual attraction to neighbour Sally (Jane Asher).

The Old Guys Review

The rather conventional sitcom starring Roger Lloyd-Pack and Clive Swift didn't cause too many ripples when it debuted last year, but it's receiving a fair bit of hype this time round. For the most part, this hype is deserved.

Jane Asher interview

She might be posh but Jane Asher reckons she'd be able to hold her own on some of Glasgow's toughest streets. The 64-year-old has just returned home to London after filming BBC series The Old Guys in Govan.

The Weekend's Television: The Old Guys

When I looked back at my notes I found that they made me laugh. What it is a little harder to say was whether the lines made me laugh because they're inherently funny, or because six weeks has given me time to get used to Roger Lloyd Pack's character, so I can now relish just how typical of him those lines are. That's one of the tricks a good sitcom has to pull off, after all, to get the audience to the stage where they feel affectionately knowing about a character's follies.

It's not hard to find fault with The Old Guys: the female characters don't quite work; the scrapes that odd-couple pensioners Tom and Roy get into feel laboured; and often it's just not funny enough. But sometimes it very much is, and Roger Lloyd Pack's performance as Tom shows signs of becoming a bit special. Tom's self-image as a hip old cat with a colourful past (much of it, we suspect, imaginary) plays well against Clive Swift as the strait-laced Roy.

The Old Guys look like they're starting to gel - just in time for a second series, perhaps?

Final episode of the sitcom from writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain. It's sharply written as you'd expect from the writers of the unassailable Peep Show, and Swift and Lloyd-Pack make an engaging double act that deserve a second series. And Jane Asher is in it, so what's not to like?

The final episode of this so-so sitcom features its main characters, two single elderly men, competing for the affections of a Belarusian prostitute in Soho - a plotline that's a long way from Galton and Simpson, to say the least. But then, this is the Noughties, and writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong were also behind the enjoyably risqué Peep Show.

It's not Withnail And I, but this gentle comedy from Peep Show creators Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong has proved a hit.