Rules of engagement
Simon Hoggart
T+There hasn't been much good comedy 1 on BBC 1 lately. In fact there's been a string of woeful flops. Doctors and Nurses by Phil Hammond and Nigel Smith, both of whom I know and think very funny, was detested by the critics. One of them called it the worst sitcom ever made. That was a wild exaggeration — there is far too much competition for the title — but it was certainly disappointing.
Then along comes The Worst Week of My Life (BBC1, Fridays) to rescue the channel's reputation, except that it won't. The week is the seven days before Howard gets married to the beautiful Mel, who has the great advantage of having Alison Steadman for a mother and the drawback of a judge for a father, who, of course, is a crusty old fuddy-duddy, because that's what judges are in sitcom land, whereas most judges I know are as quivering with up-to-date social sensitivity as any Guardian leader-writer.
They lost me early on when the priceless antique ring comically flew off someone's finger, spun through the air in slow motion before landing in a sink, rolling round like a roulette ball, before, with tedious inevitability, dropping down the plug hole. All I could think was, for goodness sake, somebody catch it, you've got all the time in the world. Later of course it's retrieved from a sewer. Oh, right. And Howard is caught by his future father-in-law fishing turds out of the toilet, except that they were really lumps of stew, so — well, you get the idea.
The main problem is that we are not interested in these people. They are mildly amusing without being engaging. They are not real characters; they are creations scripted so that things can happen to them. When, in Pawky Towers, the moose head falls down, that's not intrinsically funny. But because it hits Basil, it's hilarious. We might not like Basil, but we care about him. We're involved with him. (Similarly there are few actual gags in The Good Life, now on endless repeats out there in cable-land. Once you have four great characters, you don't need much else: throw in a pregnant pig, a comical copper, and an oversized riding hat — it doesn't really matter. The ne plus ultra of the style was The Royle Family in which nothing whatever happened.) Which is why Black Books (Channel 4, Thursdays), back for its third and probably last series, does work. Yes, Bernard is odious, Manny is a pliant idiot, an also ran in the human race, who only grows his hair because he thinks it makes him interesting, and Fran is the kind of needy person who in real life, if she walked through the door, would make you long for the moment she leaves. But we can't drag our eyes off them.
The plot is as thin as a cigarette paper. Bernard won't apologise for putting Manny's hand in the toaster, so Manny goes to work at Goliath Books, which has suddenly and mysteriously opened next door. Bernard is outraged and spies through the wall. Manny's bottom jerks as he climbs some steps. 'Look at that, the Judas boogie!' spits Bernard in a line which made me laugh for an inappropriately long time.
Once you've decided the characters are worth watching, everything else falls into place. The subplot, involving the new store's creepy manager, who runs the place like a cross between a management consultancy and a suicide cult — 'Don't interrupt me while I'm developing you' — is funny, but funny because it's Manny whose life he is wrecking.
Hardware (ITV, Sundays) is also slightly surreal, but doesn't work quite so well, even though it's been written by Simon Nye, who, I suppose we must remember, gave us The Wild West as well as Men Behaving Badly. Actually. Hardware has a certain old-fashioned charm, a sort of gentle, laddish humour which reminded me of The Likely Lads.
2DTV (ITV, Sundays) is back in a halfhour slot, and has found its length. Sonic of the sketches have an extra surreal tweak, and provided some very fine moments, including Charles and Camilla as the Osbornes, Elton John marrying David Furnish and mistaking the six-foot cake for his dress, Finding Nemo with Tony Blair as the little fish, a vicious series of sight gags called '101 Uses For Lesley Ash', and some pointed barbs at I'm A Celebrity. . celebrities, with Jordan asking. 'Do you take plastic?', to be told, 'Well, we let you in, didn't we?'
That horrible, dreary, demeaning world of celebrity was exposed in Secrets of Hello! (BBC 1, Tuesday). People are paid up to £850,000 (Westlife singer marries Irish Prime Minister's daughter) or a mere £9,000 (Alexandra Tolstoy marries unknown Eastern European) so that they can afford a wedding fit to grace the pages of Hello! or OK!. They have to lead celebrity lives, because only then are they worth paying the money that will enable them to lead celebrity lives. The inside story of the battle over the Douglas–Zeta Jones wedding was fascinating. Piers Morgan was splendidly sardonic. 'They complained about "violation" and "an invasion of privacy" — this, from a woman who had sold her own wedding for £1 million!' But when you have sold your soul to celebrity, real life is an invasion of your privacy.
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