Fittingly, the show opened by reiterating the fact that Blair seized upon the Tory idea of the Millennium Dome as a quick and easy method of placing his metaphorical fingerprint on the national psyche by way of further re-branding the international image of “New Britain” under the guise of New Labour. How revealing that a man who ostensibly rose to power on a (albeit watered-down and heavily diluted) socialist ticket should use the phrase, when talking to the fawning media on site, “bigger and better than anybody else”. For Tony, just like the Bee Gees and capitalists everywhere, size does matter. But there was no attempt made to evaluate or analyse this bold assertion by the clearly euphoric post-election Blair.

My next grumble occurred with the filmmakers failing to explore the pre-construction phase. There was no mention of the salient fact that the overwhelming majority of quality construction contractors (Bovis, Skanska, Bilfinger & Berger etc – the major players on the global stage) made no attempt to bid for this job. Bear in mind that the typical driven down fee for a contractor would be around 2% on a project valued at £758 million, then questions surely should be asked when the most successful construction firms in the world avoided the Dome. Especially when there were clearly significant amounts of money to be made. In this single point are the origins of the disaster that inevitably followed.

The management from day one was clearly a shambles and represented all that is bad in project management. There was absolutely no leadership despite a plethora of senior management. Equally clearly, there was no master plan or master construction programme, but there were mission statements and sound bites galore. To watch Chief Executive Jenny Page try to get costs from one of the architects involved was hilarious. Both parties were clearly out of their depth and this was the blind leading the blind. This single moment encapsulated all the problems that bedeviled the project in a nutshell – dreadful management, lack of budgetary control, lack of knowledge, lack of direction, poor working relationships, lack of knowledge, lack of relevant experience, unrestricted egos. Fundamentally, you knew that from this moment on the project was doomed.

Mandelson’s comments were, in themselves, extremely revealing and he proved himself to be a master of spin. Every eventuality was clearly being accounted for. It was almost poignant to watch him ask a group of schoolchildren (a focus group in Dome-speak) if they could “help save his career.” More illuminating was the moment that two kids on the bus travelling to meet Mandy stated that “the money would be better spent on other things” – out of the mouths of babes indeed. As they sat around a table and the Minister Without Portfolio canvassed their opinion for ideas for inside the Dome, one girl proposed a time machine that took the visitor back to a specific point in history. Immediately Mandelson countered back with “I’m a moderniser, what about the next millennium? Let’s look forwards, not backwards.” Cue a roomful of confused children.

Furthermore, Mandelson’s comments about fellow MPs who were against the Dome being “jokers and piss artists” was particularly revealing. Party apparatchiks nodded obsequiously as he offered up these thoughts on his peers. It was strange that he allowed Austin Mitchell’s name to be clearly linked to this statement, but the festering rancour was visible for all to see. In fact, if you didn’t believe in the Dome, you had forgotten what it was like to feel great about Britain said Mandy after the topping out ceremony.

As committee after committee sat and talked yet more hot air about the Dome, it was obvious that there was never a proper financial control on this project. Fiscal matters were given only cursory consideration until the bottom line was discussed. Yet architects were being asked to design zones with only the flimsiest of briefs. This was exemplified by the problems surrounding the Spirit Zone. The architect may have been typically arrogant, self indulgent and ludicrously self opinionated when defending her design and understanding of the concept but she was also the victim of hapless bureaucracy that hindered progress at every level. This was a matter that Page could have easily sorted out but, for whatever reason, chose not to. This was an entirely unprofessional attitude and no doubt will be further demonstrated in the subsequent programmes.

This opening episode was derivative of the genre – centering on Mandelson and Page with occasional observations from a construction worker. Yes, you’ve guessed it – here was a character, a former rodeo star, no less. Yet the main character of the show, the Dome itself, despite being talked of constantly, was almost a second-stringer as the various individuals involved attempted to define it and use it for their own ends. The shots of the Dome were dully predictable and clearly the film crew chose to shoot on site at specific moments in the construction sequence. This was irritating as, despite the propaganda being delivered from all concerned, this was not a particularly complex job in engineering or construction terms, yet, once again, no attempt was made to verify these claims.

The abiding folly is not the Dome itself. The real folly is that it could, and should, within the constraints set, have worked. The will, the financial backing and the expertise were all there. But from Blair’s decision to seize upon the Tory dream, everything went horribly wrong. From inception to completion, this has been the single biggest cock-up in construction history. The initial programme failed to convey how the mistakes and errors that were made could have been redeemed but, let’s be brutally honest here, why focus on the reasons when the characters are so headstrong, arrogant and idealistic? Potentially, this has the makings of a classic. Let’s hope the first part was the weakest link. Mandy and Tone for the walk of shame, anyone?

Big Brother: How Was It For You? takes its cue from the other major high profile show of the summer I Love the Seventies. This was a slight but enjoyable, well-intentioned effort combining archive footage and punditry from celebs such as Davina McCall, Graham Norton, Jon Snow, Times columnist Matthew Parris and Coronation Street actors Julie Hesmondhalgh and Tina O’Brien, as well as representatives of the Great British Public. Discussing the events in the house as they occurred in chronological order, the programme reasserted one of the most positive aspects of Big Brother. The fact that the series had brought people together, it was a case of television actually living up to its hype – unlike EastEnders, everybody was indeed talking about it. There was some welcome revisionism present in the interviewees’ perceptions of the housemates, now divorced from the editorialised slant of most of the updates and tabloid copy (“I liked Sada. I was sorry to see her go because she brought an element to it. I would rather have seen most of the men evicted before I voted Sada out.”) and some of the more unpopular contestants, Nick and Mel, now received praise for their contributions to the series. Overall, it was the clips of life in the house that elicited the most pleasure from this viewer – the exploits of Sada the mosquito-exterminating Buddhist, the fabulous, ill-tempered showdown between Craig and Caroline, the machinations and eventual comeuppance of Nick and Anna’s development from wallflower to comedienne in search of an audience.

The evening continued with What Happened to the Housemates? – our chance to catch up with the activities of the contestants as they discussed the impact that their participation in Big Brother has had on their lives. Yet there was very little actual analysis, no sense of the contestants offering much insight into their life-changing experiences as most (especially Nick and Craig) took their contribution to the programme as an opportunity to flaunt their new-found celebrity status. Unfortunately, the good-natured, nostalgic feel of the previous programme was all but dissipated here by the all-pervasive melancholia of this documentary. Sada managed to dampen the atmosphere very early on by bemoaning the press intrusion into her everyday life since leaving the house while Melanie complained (albeit with some justification) about the media’s tendency to reduce genuine three-dimensional people into accessible, inappropriate stereotypes.

Watching the ex-housemates on our television screens, turning up on The Priory, TFI Friday and Celebrity Ready Steady Cook has been an awkward, bewildering sight. Now out of the artificial environment of the Big Brother house, they are no longer our guinea pigs; there appears to be have been a fundamental change in these “ordinary people” as they now exploit their status for the purposes of self-promotion and self-gratification (rubbing shoulders with Brad Pitt, Boyzone and Ainsley Harriot) that feels unpalatable somehow. However, for those wishing to follow the current activities of the 11, the programme delivered on its promises. Nick, having released his tie-in book and video and filmed his own game show, Trust Me, was reluctant to unveil his next bid for world domination but remained quietly confident of future deals to come. Craig has clinched an album deal and now intends to close down his building business to concentrate on a recording career. We saw clips of Melanie filming her own game show Chained, Tom starting out as a club DJ, Claire appearing in Jack and the Beanstalk at Windsor and Caroline taking a break from recording her album to switch on the Christmas lights at Wolverhampton. There is a definite sense of the contestants merely swapping one rarefied cocoon for another as they move from hotel to hotel, traveling by limousine accompanied by bodyguards and publicists. It no longer seemed to matter how they had behaved during their time in the house, their personalities now lost within the Big Brother publicity machine. The series may have provided compulsive viewing, but it also appears to have precipitated some of the most inexplicable, unworthy career resurrections since Joan Collins shagged Oliver Tobias in a lift in The Stud.

Given the revenue that Channel 4 and Bazal Productions have attained from the success of the show, one can hardly blame any of the contestants for their subsequent opportunism and yet there was little evidence of celebrity being utilised in a positive manner. Gratifyingly, Darren appeared intent on traveling to promote AIDS awareness in Jamaica, Andrew planning to travel and work abroad, while Anna seemed unaltered by her fame, remaining just as engaging – and enigmatic – as ever, even though she too appeared to have reservations about her participation in the show (“It was a good experience. It was a funny experience. It was something that I’d never do again and I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody.”) Ironically, it was Nichola, previously one of the most emotionally inconsistent of the participants, now living in London and concentrating on her clothing designs, who seemed the most well adjusted of all. Refreshingly unfazed by the limited success of her single The Game and utterly philosophical and candid about her experience of Big Brother (“I think all this celebrity stuff is just a load of bollocks”), she emerged as a reassuringly upbeat and very likeable figure.

Ultimately, this was a somewhat sobering reading of the aftermath of Big Brother (so much so that I did not feel inclined to watch the highlights of the final week in the house or the viewers’ favourite episode scheduled after a Graham Norton special) – but a programme that should be essential viewing for anyone applying to take part in the second series. How Was It For You? and What Happened to the Housemates? were both nevertheless appropriate tributes to disparate aspects of Big Brother, and eminently watchable footnotes to the most caustically compelling television of the year.

In general this series has been of a uniform standard, with no episode lacking anything the rest of the run possessed. However, the flipside to this is that no episode has shone out as being particularly brilliant.

It must be said that the programme has again been extremely well received; at least in the experience of this reviewer. However, as weighted towards Glasgow and its colloquialisms and humour as Chewin’ the Fat undoubtedly is, it is difficult to ascertain what the response has truly been outwith the city where I live. Perhaps in Edinburgh or indeed London, the consensus is different. But that is missing the point; the reviews have been positive in the press, and public opinion seems to be that they want more.

In terms of characters, the old stalwarts were mostly in place. I found many of them, however, to be slightly stale. Ronald Villiers the appalling actor had several noteworthy moments, particularly the “Kwik-Fit” style advert, but there seemed to be an element of re-using old ideas. The Lonely Shopkeeper and the Lighthouse Men are one-joke sketches, so if there is to be a fourth series I would prefer to see them phased out, as I believe them to have run their course. Jack and Victor the old men, and Bish and Bosh the painters are still enjoyable, partly because they are slightly more realistic and have more scope for development.

As for the new inclusions this series, there was an element of hit-and-miss about them. The “ooh, fancy” gag had been trailed in all the tabloid papers as the “new catch phrase” item, but it was disappointing. Yes, your friends may take the mickey for using “big” fancy words, but that in itself is not worth several short sketches.

One thing that was notable was the slightly more “vulgar” approach. A series of sketches about people declaring that their son has just started masturbating (much to the embarrassment of the boy), “wanker” hand signals, spoofs of “gay chat lines”, “Joey Deacon” faces; all marked a more “adult” approach, albeit with a slight playground mentality to it. Don’t get me wrong, much of it was hilarious, but there is the worry that they may go too far if pushed slightly further. Indeed, several friends have remarked to me that they believed it was all too much “smut”, one even commenting that one sketch was “almost child pornography”. Far from it, of course, the sketch was merely about how you can forgive any vandalism or mishap provided it’s carried out by an angelic-faced child. But the thought is there: if some sketches are “risque”, will narrow-minded people read too much into those that are entirely innocent?

So where do the team go now? Well, the rumours have it that they are preparing sitcoms for Ronald Villiers and Jack & Victor. I personally feel that Jack and Victor have more mileage, as proved in the stage show Still Game, which develops the two further. Villiers I feel is too thin a character to sustain a programme on his own. Rab C Nesbitt’s greatest moments were as three minute sketches on Naked Video. We do not need another sketch character fleshed out into a poor sitcom. Scotland has suffered enough.

As for Chewin’ the Fat itself? I believe the wisest move would be to call it a day. This third series was thoroughly enjoyable but it did seem slightly bereft of new ideas, relying too heavily on old favourites trotting out familiar catch phrases. It would be far better to bow out on a high note and concentrate on something new.

And one final note? “Dobber” is still an extremely funny word.

Frankly I found it an enormous disappointment. I wasn’t expecting much to be honest, perhaps some amusing high jinx and some pretty views of Barcelona, but the storyline was practically lifted from Grange Hill‘s back-catalogue; chases with the local lads, not being able to convert to the local currency and trying to chat up girls. The worst part was the tagged in plotline regarding Lorraine’s estranged son and his father who won’t allow her access to the child. It just stretched credibility and was handled absolutely ham fistedly. So unrealistic was it, that one almost expected the Prince of Moldovia to waft by.

The problem was not the storyline itself, but as far as I can recall there had been no build up or indication that she had a child. Lorraine has always been the manipulative bitch, using whoever or whatever to get her way – now she’s a caring mother, wronged by her ex-husband. The switch to show a different side of a personality is a difficult to achieve, especially one as clearly defined as Lorraine’s, but here it was dumped on us without a by-your-leave and without any sort of subtlety. After setting up Lewis for blackmail, to let on about her situation so quickly was not true to her character or even necessary to the plot, just a quick gimmick, a token demonstration that she has a soft side, and one I would expect to be quickly forgotten when normal service resumes. In fact I would expect the fact she has a son to be dropped as soon as possible to allow the evil witch act to be brought once more to the forefront.

Another thing that puzzled me about the programme is that nobody actually seems to like each other much. A large bunch of lads in Spain yet none of them seem to know each other particularly well or get on. Within Chester it’s fair enough; friends of friends who know enough to talk to each other in the pub, but to go to someone’s stag party abroad shows the limitations of this kind of venture as Tony and Sol stood out like sore thumbs, outsiders to the group, whilst the younger Max and OB could ( and perhaps should ) have been somewhere else altogether. Although their antics were amusing, they aren’t really friends of Finn because in the regular episodes Finn doesn’t really have friends.

Indicative of these late night excursion was the inclusion of more earthy and, some would argue, realistic speech. Yet this rang just hollow, as swearing was clumsily crow-barred into the dialogue. It contributed nothing to the programme. For me it would have been refreshing to live without it, most adults use of swear words are so mundane that any surprise or shock value is lost by the sheer repetition of them in a normal conversation.

All in all this episode was a bit of a waste, with so much happening that just didn’t work or contribute to the overall themes of the programme. I felt that the writers were trying too hard to make something of this special edition, a contrast to the rape storyline. The problem is that the characters floundered around in unfamiliar surroundings with a weak plot that over-dramatised events. It simply highlighted for me that the programme is too variable; when on form it’s the best soap around, but all too often it falls short.

Instead we had a bunch of the cast jetting off to a chilly-looking Barcelona for a stag weekend. Luckily this group included some of the very best Hollyoaks characters – Luke, Finn, Max, OB – but sadly some of the very worst – principally Tony, plus the unfailingly irritating Carol. And although the whole thing was presented as a conventional spin-off – Finn announcing to the rest of the gang (and us) “Whatever happens in Barcelona stays in Barcelona …”, all of the series’ perennial concerns reared their heads: Lewis’ affairs (business and emotional); Tony’s schemes to ruin Finn’s marriage; and Max & OB’s raging libido. Note: these lads have a permanent hard-on, which has at least made for an amusing stream of Carry On gags over the past few weeks of the “something’s come up” variety. Other regulars along for the ride included Luke, star of the first Hollyoaks late nighter earlier in the year, but this time in very much a secondary role (getting pissed, mostly).

It all made for a highly entertaining hour and a half. The somewhat ludicrous nature of the scrapes and mini-crises the characters contrived to find themselves in were more than compensated for by that one element which sets Hollyoaks up above all other soap operas: its humour. The cast is lucky to boast a fair few fine comic actors who handle both verbal and visual jokes superbly well: the obvious duo of Max (Matt Littler) and OB (Darren Jeffries) who must be given their own spin-off show sooner or later, together with the more laconic, rasping wit of Finn (James Redmond). He is a great creation, whose response to people questioning his decision to marry someone almost twice his age is invariably an amusingly offensive insult or dry wisecrack.

With the comic lines came comic situations (sometimes verging on the tragicomic) all meticulously well-structured into an unfolding sequence of mayhem. So we had fights with the locals, endless boozing, cross-dressing, an obligatory chase round the back-streets, stolen money, compromising photos, drinking competitions, impotency, nicked transit vans, endless interrupted sexual liaisons, wild leaps off the side of cruise ships, child abduction, an arrow up the arse and a blow job from a transvestite.

Best of all, however, was loads of swearing. Where to begin? “Hello? Earth to dickhead?” “My arse is really stinging.” “Old soft-bollocks here.” Perhaps best of all, though, was the long-overdue re-appearance on telly of the seminal “Knobhead!” OK, so it’s cheap and obvious, a self-indulgence merited by the late hour; but it’s still great to hear the characters freed by the watershed and able to say what you think they so really want to say at 6.30pm but sadly can’t.

Some of the goings-on were handled quite sensitively and with subtlety – Max’s coyness about his hitherto lack of sexual stamina resolved in a sympathetic way rather than via a giant orgasm of bravado and triumphalism. There was also time for discussion of the ongoing recuperation of Luke following his court case, with hints of just how unresolved and unsettled his feelings still are to everyone around him.

Lewis meanwhile is clearly heading for his decline and fall, with the appearance on the scene of his lover Lorraine, even wooing and bedevilling his every move out here in another country. Significantly, as with the other mini-storylines, this entanglement wasn’t wrapped up in the 90 minutes – far from it: the drama will simply pick up once more next time, back in that quiet suburb of Chester.

This was an entirely justified, hugely entertaining and well-made episode, excellently written by Allan Swift and directed by Peter Rose. The trip abroad seemed well worth it – and even better, the action wasn’t limited to three or four main settings (i.e. The bar. The bedroom. The café.) Thanks to that famous efficiency of Mersey Television, the drama ranged from the top of castles, football stadiums, alleyways, restaurants, bars, clubs and hotels down to the seafront and dockside. A fine advert for the city – if not for its people, who were portrayed as either hot-headed lotharios or Godfather-esque schemers who all dressed in black and had greasy hair.

It’s been a great year for Hollyoaks. 1999 ended with a bus blowing up killing off one of the series’ most annoying characters (Rob) and marking the end of a troublesome era on the show. Since then there’s been one hell of a renaissance. It’s ironic that Phil Redmond’s two Channel 4 soaps have completely repositioned themselves over the last 12 months to become mirror images of each other – with the result that Hollyoaks ends 2000 utterly accomplished, commanding and mature; and Brookside trivial, childish, and pointless.

Well we finally got that episode of The X Files almost a year after its original transmission in the States and the predictable question is, was it worth it? For this viewer the answer is a resounding yes. In the same week that Coronation Street attempted to not so much push back the envelope of British television but lick it gently, Chris Carter served up a classic X Files episode that will surely rank as one of the best ever produced.

Back where it belongs on BBC2, the current season of The X Files has seen a welcome return to form. This coincides neatly with a departure from the long running alien conspiracy story arc and an equally welcome return to the stand alone episodes that cemented The X Files elevated position in the pantheon of classic cult television. This is truly where The X Files excel – stories such as kids moving faster than the speed of light, brain eating genetic freaks – tales that stretch not only the imagination but credulity itself.

So, here was the episode that contained Frank Black (from Carter’s aborted “darker” X Files series, Millennium), millennial death cults, zombies, the millennium itself, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the kiss that X Philes the world over had been eagerly anticipating – quite a list of ingredients. So, did Carter over egg the pudding?

No. This was a beautifully crafted episode, one that had clearly been pored over script wise. Tying in Frank Black and Millennium was a masterstroke and the scenes shared by Fox, Dana and Frank were wonderfully played. No grandstanding or posturing but simply a meeting of minds, co-operation rather than confrontation. These scenes worked and the empathy between all three was evident but not overpowering. Thanks to the scheduling dummies at Scottish Television, I can’t really say how well the Millennium angle worked but, to quote Walter Skinner, I’m certain that there was closure.

The plot involved four former FBI agents rising from the dead to fulfill their self proclaimed roles as the Four Horsemen (thus bringing about Armageddon) traded on a beautiful twist done with that sublime ’50s B-movie freehand style that Carter does so well. But on this occasion there was a lightness of touch directorially speaking and, clearly, the work of Terence Davies was paid due homage stylistically. The constant movement of the camera was breathtaking and the sense of propulsion (both plot-wise and visually) was joyous. Even the scenes in which nothing happened visually, there was an innate sense of movement that held the imagination in fevered anticipation.

To have the millennial death cult consisting of dead FBI agents was a quirky touch that Kinky Friedman would have approved of. Sometimes, you can see so many oblique references to great, unsung American cultural icons that it’s hard to concentrate on the story at hand but, thankfully, this season has seen a reduction in this sometimes cloying habit – though, when I finally do get round to watching Millennium, I pray that the Pixies (the group from whence Frank Black draws his name) are to be heard regularly!

However, the one moment that fans worldwide waited for, the kiss, was handled intelligently and fitted seamlessly into the storyline. After all, what could more natural at New Year – albeit after saving mankind from Armageddon – than to kiss your colleague? If you’ll pardon the rather obvious pun, this was a sticky moment for the writers.

Rather than make the kiss a focal point of the story, they chose to use it as a natural conclusion to the episode rather than a dénouement or a grand climax (ouch!). Neither a grand statement nor a pivotal life affirming moment, it was just a simple kiss. One not of passion, unrequited love or sinfulness but a lingering moment of tenderness that was conveyed to the viewer with subtlety and a sense of genuine affection, rather than affectation. Indeed you almost felt as if you were intruding, so private and charming was this scene. After all the bedbugs and ballyhoo surrounding the kiss, to watch it feeling as if one was almost a voyeur was sheer, unadulterated genius. More by luck than judgement perhaps, but beautiful nonetheless.

This episode contained all that is good and great about The X Files. To the above add in the wonderful, imaginative score, the fantastic lighting and crisp, taut direction and the end result is a slice of genius – an ensemble piece where everything works with a dynamic synergy that imbues the viewer with a sense of awe and wonderment at the finished product. Long may The X Files be out there.

Almost 20 years on, this bizarre annual ritual still takes up a large chunk of BBC1′s morning schedules; but from what I could recall of those earlier ceremonies, nothing much had changed – which is of course the whole point. As with the Remembrance Ceremony at the Cenotaph each November, so the Opening of Parliament appears on television every year without fail and with no shocking variations to long-established routines and conventions. And as with the Cenotaph ceremony, BBC commentary for this event was provided by the master of the civic occasion, David Dimbleby.

David seemed to pass into old age very suddenly when, about seven or eight years ago, he slipped out of that former Panorama/This Week Next Week image (slab of dark hair flopped resolutely over his round, beaming face, the terrible half-in-fashion suits) into the one he still sports now: grey wispy hair not so much flopping but grazing on the top of his wizened face; his suits more bland, inoffensive, silvery. His manner, however, remains the same – a pretender to the interviewer’s throne, never managing to master a tough discussion or debate and instead always seeming more at ease narrating and introducing grand events.

He was in his element here. Right from the programme’s opening – film of stables being prepared, coaches cleaned and horses groomed – there was plenty of time for David to come up with ever more fanciful descriptions. He marvelled at Cherie Blair’s “enormous blue hat”, the presentation of “The Cap of Maintenance”, and the beautiful morning – “We expected the most appalling weather,” he chuckled. Some of it was interesting – such as the scenes showing the Yeoman of the Guard searching the cellars looking for a modern-day Guy Fawkes (amusingly this is carried out every year). But the highlight was when someone fainted and had to be carried out of Westminster by a band of burly pensioners – “it must be the heat, it does get very hot,” reassured an anxious David.

I’d forgotten how relatively short the actual Queen’s Speech is – barely 10 minutes – in comparison with the enormously long procession to and from Parliament. It was startling to not only see the forced joviality – Tony Blair and William Hague giggling in the corridor like eager schoolboys – but all the rusty judges, archbishops and peeresses who turn out at this highlight of the social calendar. Even Lord Sir John Birt made the effort to show up, seated in a prominent position for the BBC cameras to pick him out.

But the coverage seemed to drag on and on. The dreadful Sian Williams hosted a pointless debate out on a street in Bristol which was supposed to reflect what Ordinary People were thinking. “Like many city centre estates, this one’s had real problems,” she generalised, before adopting a scary tone: “We came down here last night – and saw some people driving about quite fast!” Then the whole programme was actually extended by some 10 minutes – not to cover a breaking story, but to allow Anne Widdecombe to get to the studio in time. She rushed in, panting, hair and clothes awry, to be spoken to very brusquely by David as if telling her off for her lateness. The whole thing ended with the disturbing image of the joint Commons/Lords choir merrily carolling some of Handel’s Messiah.

Maybe it was down to the whim of a couple of our old crinkly teachers, but for at least two years running our morning classes were replaced with this hour of pomp and pageantry courtesy of the BBC. I guess it may have seemed mightily important to people of my teachers’ generation – especially the ceremonial dimension of it all, the appearance of the monarch, the grand costumes, and indeed the chance to see inside a building still pretty much out of bounds to the camera lens. What we as naïve stupid infants were supposed to take from it, I’ve still no idea. But like anything that was proscribed or force-fed back at primary school, it became an object of hate, of huge objection, and intense numbing boredom.

But it did get us out of creative writing.

Smash! is “The Story of the British Hit Single”. This could be a great concept for a series, an in-depth review of the last 40 years, full of memorable archive footage and interesting facts. Nicely done, it could be a great landmark series, along the lines of the Beatles Anthology. So why the hell are they cramming over 40 years of pop into six 25-minute long programmes?

Each episode concentrates on a particular genre, such as Rock Anthems, Dance Music, Teen Pop, and in this episode, Sex. This is a mistake, as there’s no sense of chronology, nor any sense of any major shifts in pop music. It also means that loads of the most influential singles of the past, which don’t fit into any categories, get ignored. Where could we put – say – The Stone Roses or Elton John? And it still comes down to the length of the programme, there’s no way they can possibly cover the genre in 25 minutes. Top Ten devotes 90 minutes to each genre, and still has trouble fitting in all the important records.

The Sex episode was ill-conceived from the start, as the production team seemed unsure as to whether they were covering songs about sex or artists that used sex to sell records. Therefore we got a mishmash of both – Cliff Richard talked about how controversial he was at the start of his career, by using his “smouldering” eyes, before we were then abruptly given the story of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Relax. Then it was a discussion of the Rolling Stones, before a long feature about Lola by the Kinks. There’s a world of difference between Lola and Relax – alright, they’re both vaguely about sex, but Lola is just a song about transvestism, and is not an overtly sexual record, while Relax includes “a massive orgasm” in the middle. Then the last 10 minutes discussed the Spice Girls, who are not, and never have been, an overtly sexual act. How is it possible to cite Wannabe as a landmark in sexually-related pop? Girl Power or not, this should have gone in the Teen Pop show. All Saints were also mentioned, although Paul Gambaccinni pointed out that they were doing stuff that American acts like TLC did first. And then, most ridiculously of all – Steps! This seemingly was to point out that they were not concerned with sex at all, which is accurate, but why feature them in a programme about it? Would the Teen Pop episode include Marilyn Manson just to show he isn’t a teen pop act?

Clearly the programme can’t live up to its subtitle, but at the very least we could expect a witty, fun series. Alas, the features are dull, the commentary is bland (delivered with no feeling by nice-voice-no-personality DJ Harriet Scott) and the interviewees are poorly chosen. While we had Cliff Richard, Holly Johnson, Ray Davies, and Neil Tennant (who was excellent) the rest of the pundits were the least imaginative choice possible: Tony Blackburn, who’s a total parody of himself and should never be allowed to comment on music again; Mike Read, who, ridiculously, didn’t appear in the section devoted to Relax; and the over-exposed Kate Thornton, who discussed the rise of the Spice Girls but didn’t mention the time she threw them out of the Smash Hits office while she was editor and proclaimed they would never be famous. At least Gail Porter didn’t make an appearance this week, so the sequence in the first episode where Mike Read, Steps and Porter sang Bohemian Rhapsody remains the worst thing shown on television this year. For now, at least.

The research is also not quite what you’d expect from a so-called “landmark” series – the performance of Relax on Top of the Pops was incorrectly billed as being from October 1983, despite there being tinsel on the set and the record not being in the charts at that point. The Relax sequence was probably the best, but they seemed to lose interest at the end and the item ended with “The record was released, it got banned then sold millions of copies”, and that was it. Could we not have seen some news footage from the era to illustrate that? Or even a word from Mike Read? The level of care and attention given to the series can probably be illustrated by the fact that the first few minutes of the programme were devoted to introducing the series and what was coming up – despite this being the second episode.

Of course, you could say that we’re expecting too much from 25 minutes of nostalgia, and you could be right. But given Top Ten and I Love the Seventies have done similar things with twice as much wit, depth and care, is there any need for this series to exist at all?

Sensibly, then, this edition opened with the quick confirmation that Victor was already dead. It would be hard to imagine a sitcom episode which could credibly trot out the usual misunderstandings and gags simply to position the main character just so, to meet his maker. Instead, this extended episode of One Foot In The Grave was posited more as a post mortem, gently unraveling just how Victor came to die, and more importantly, how Margaret was going to carry on alone.

In the midst of all this was the usual top quality writing from David Renwick. I remember reading once that in writing his over-complicated comic-book “Watchmen”, Alan Moore had to draw out a chart in order to follow the separate plot strands and characters he was working with. It strikes me that Renwick must do something similar for each episode of One Foot. Throughout tonight’s episode, references (that were very funny in themselves) were made to incidents which were picked up on later on (particularly in the superb final montage which saw Victor in a sequence of misfortunes, all of which we had heard about second-hand in the preceding 40 minutes). Questions were posed in the plot which we often didn’t appreciate as such at the time, and all were answered by the episode’s end.

In many ways One Foot is all about its structure. However its often superbly complicated farce (much like Jonathan Creek) is by no means the be-all of the programme – although it is easily the best story-lined sitcom since Only Fools and Horses (at its peak). Renwick’s tight plotting always remains subservient to the character, and that’s how it should be. One Foot affords Victor and Margaret real moments of humanity, even if it’s just the excruciatingly mundane frustration of Victor struggling to open a vacuum-wrapped pack of video tapes. Neither Victor nor Margaret are especially witty, and – most importantly – neither are laughable. For all the puff about Meldrew being the quintessential grumpy old man, he is always the character the audience can most readily identify with.

So to his death, then. In some quarters there has been speculation that it was insufficiently explicit as to allow the possibility that it may not have happened. This, of course, is nonsense. The shot of his cap floating to the gutter after he’d been struck by the car, followed moments later by his flailing arm encroaching into the frame was absolutely, definitely final. To have actually seen, in some detail, the body would be to undo the whole character. Enough information was given for us to know he was dead, but to not have to accept it. Otherwise the succeeding, very funny flashbacks of Victor would have been like watching a walking cadaver.

In the final analysis, this obviously wasn’t the best episode of One Foot In The Grave ever – nor even of this series. But how can we really be well disposed towards the episode that ends it all anyway? With a macabre final twist (cf Jonathan Creek again) and a very affecting pastoral shot over the end credits, this was still superior stuff. You can’t really imagine My Family – between all the wise-cracking – pulling it off quite like this, can you?

Meanwhile, over on ITV a vague relation of Camilla Paker-Bowles won the lot on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. I don’t believe it!

Well, on the surface, perhaps it has slightly. While I cannot argue with the fact that I roared and laughed my way through tonight’s episode, there is an overwhelming feeling that it lacked something. Yes, it was funny, but there was nothing particularly innovative about the whole affair.

Ronald Villiers, the hopeless actor, is still stumbling his way through auditions and adverts, the lighthouse keepers are still grating on each others nerves, and the “Glasgae Banter Boys” are still finding thrills in the sound of an Evening Times salesman. The recurring characters are all in place with no changes (although the “good guy/wank” running joke has been dropped after the stars grew tired of people in the street shouting “wank!” at them), as it should be with old characters. The Fast Show had recurring characters and it was the familiarity with them that drew you back.

However, this is a new series, so some new characters and scenarios are inevitably introduced. How did the new items fare? At this early stage it is difficult to tell. Some worked from the outset, in particular the pathetic “eco-terrorist” who asks a fisherman how he likes being hooked in the mouth before running away (with a cry of “‘mon the fish!”) went down well with this reviewer. Certain ideas seemed to be slightly nervous, as if the team are wary of trying out different concepts for fear they don’t work. Perhaps it’s simply my current unfamiliarity with these innovations which gives me that feeling. Time will tell on that score.

The other criticism I had was the familiarity of some of the new sketches. It seemed to me that that many had been done before in other shows. A football manager on the touchline having his every movement mimicked by his assistant had been done in a slightly different manner by The Fast Show, and the “Invisible Boss” gag, while funny, was even funnier when it first show up in cult ’80s film Amazon Women on the Moon. I would hope that this is a minor lapse and does not indicate a lack of new ideas.

The stars of the show, Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill, aided by Karen Dunbar amongst others, have succeeded in crafting a series that taps into a hidden element of Scotland that we find easy to laugh at, mainly because – certainly to a man brought up in Glasgow – it is so familiar. Only another Scotsman would acknowledge that we find humour in the word “dobber”, a “window licker”-type face that could possibly be offensive in the wrong hands, and the “take that line to the bookies” style of marker pen fighting seen in schools throughout the land. Much of the humour is of the juvenile type, but it works because above all else it is funny.

To be fair, while I did have some misgivings, this was the first episode, and so some of the new sketches will surely settle in through the course of the run. I will certainly look at this review again when the series has ended to see if my concerns were unfounded or not. I for one believe that Chewin’ the Fat still has a lot to offer. I just wonder what the English think of it…