With Penelope Keith and Peter Bowles undiminished by age, all looked promising for this latest sitcom revival. But, pretty much as soon as Audrey kicked off about automated telephone systems (“What is a hash key?”) all the reasons why this much-loved classic should remain in the past-tense bled onto the screen. Here were long, flatly shot scenes, and actors delivering their lines to the back of the studio (although one dated aspect I did enjoy – the reappearance of the rubbish painting of the Grantleigh Estate by way of a backdrop to the Old Lodge cottage).

And then there was the oddly politicised script – strong stuff for Mince Pie Time. With so many numerous tart remarks about the ruination of rural pursuits, it seemed like an address for the Countryside Alliance would flash up on screen at any moment. Richard even diffused the plot at the end of the hour with the formation of “an independent farmers’ cooperative”, for goodness sake.

But the most uncomfortable aspect about this oddity was Audrey herself. I’d forgotten, this was a character who was pretty beastly all in all – trampling over sweet Marjory’s aspirations and sending the nouveau riche Richard DeVere to Coventry thanks to his lack of breeding. While she always insisted country lore was sacred and should be propagated, she was also a woman who couldn’t be bothered to go a tiny distance to respect other cultures – hence Mrs Polouvicka famously reduced to “Mrs Poo”.

Now, 25 years on, she was pulling the same shtick again, but this time Audrey’s haughty ways were untempered by her situation. The lady of the manor was no longer stuck in reduced circumstances. She had the big house, money, and a husband who – it was implicated – employed immigrant farmhands at less than the minimum wage.

To be frank, it was just plain unsettling how often this one-off production made disgruntled comments about race. Aside from teaching foreign staff about where the “crudités” were kept, there was also the tired old joke regarding attacks on our “lingua franca” (ho ho!), and Mrs DV’s aforementioned remark about “foreign voices”. Should we have laughed at Audrey, or with her? I’m really not sure. In celebrating her 25th wedding anniversary with that Czech supermarket tycoon-turned country gentleman, she was certainly quick to remind him that – when the chips are down – blood and culture would always separate them. As far as she was concerned, Richard counted among his kin Robert Maxwell, a proper rotter.

And so, as the cast assembled on that staircase to wave at the police – aping the moment a quarter of a century on when DeVere wed fforbes-Hamilton – I was left feeling a little puzzled. To the Manor Born was one of the quintessential cosy ‘coms of the ’70s and ’80s. In a new century, though, with not all that much changed about the show, it seems a very rum thing indeed. Perhaps, as the saying goes, the past is another country. Dunno about you, though, but I’m not all that keen on hearing Audrey’s very “foreign” voice around these parts again.

The story began with a wonderfully muscular and adrenaline-fuelled new version of the theme tune, and concluded with end credits flying up the screen in double-quick time. This was 70 minutes of high octane stuff that managed to make you feel as if you’d failed to pick up on loads of subtext, while also leaving you with the contrary suspicion that perhaps there had been nothing more to this story than smoke and mirrors.

“Voyage of the Damned” probably shouldn’t be viewed again. Like an old Marx Brothers film, or a fondly remembered sitcom, it’s better to leave it in its Christmas Day-induced warm fuzziness than risk confirming it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Not that this was an entirely frivolous outing for the Doctor. In terms of effects, setting and – most importantly – spectacle, this was the most impressive Yuletide special yet. Doctor Who promises to tell big stories, but while episodes such as “Daleks in Manhattan” are undermined by limited sets and a lack of any real expansiveness, “Voyage of the Damned” was totally epic.

We knew the tale took The Poseidon Adventure as its inspiration, and this helped condition the viewer for what lay ahead. With the audience waiting for the impending disaster to occur, the decks were pretty much cleared for writer Russell T Davies, to use extreme shorthand to put in place the set of circumstances by which the Titanic would meet its doom. Sadly this meant Geoffrey Palmer was denied much opportunity to shine in his role as ship’s captain. It also meant we never really got much opportunity to get a sense of the type of society which had put together this intergalactic vessel.

Instead much of the pre-crash time was spent allowing David Tennant’s Doctor to go all doe-eyed at Kylie Minogue. Clearly Minogue is a hugely popular figure, who – like Ant and Dec and perhaps few others in this country – transcends the public cynicism usually directed towards celebrities. Securing her services for the Christmas special was a master stroke (and one that perhaps helped the episode secure best-ever Yuletide ratings), but having the Doctor so clearly in thrall of Astrid, slightly diminished him. In fact, the manner in which he mooched around, proffering his best combination of comedy and mystery to attract a girl he liked the look of is a little bit off-putting – not to mention contrary to his well-held belief it’s what’s inside that matters.

Still when Tennant wasn’t attempting to chat up the staff, he was able to craft a few brilliant moments of Doctor-ish behaviour. In particular the early scenes of him mixing with the passengers showed this incarnation at his most charming since “Smith and Jones” – but then of course he was trying to chat up Martha Jones. Sadly, Minogue wasn’t anything like as good a foil for Tennant as the just departed Freema Agyeman. Astrid lacked any sense of shape or solidity. Clearly part of the problem was we needed to care about her by the time she met her demise, and this meant everything she said or did had to contribute to the piquancy of her sacrifice. It didn’t help either that Kylie isn’t really that good an actress …

George Costigan’s problems had nothing to do with acting ability, rather his character seemed pulled straight out of the pages of 2000 AD – and not from a particularly good strip either. You have to wonder why Davies has so far resisted a returning enemy in any of the Christmas specials. Max Capricorn was the least memorable foe the Doctor has had to vanquish since Simon Pegg, and in a way the failed shipping magnate’s rather weak death-by-forklift-truck seemed quite appropriate.

Was Davies trying to recreate the trick he had used so effectively in “The Parting of the Ways”? In that episode the juxtaposition of a fleet of Daleks being brought down by a tow rope worked brilliantly, but that was because said rope was located on Earth. Here, the presence of something as mundane as a forklift truck on a futuristic space vessel was just too opportune and too silly even for Christmas Day. Astrid’s remarks about equality for cyborgs, the overcooked earthiness of the two competition winners, and even the Queen (voiced by 1980s ‘Who turn Jessica Martin) proffering the Doctor her thanks were all permissible by comparison.

But, even with all that, “Voyage of the Damned” was still great. Watched from within the cocoon of Christmas Day it outshone everything else in the schedules. It was big, exciting and exhilarating, and the notion of Londoners fleeing the capital city at Christmas a masterstroke. It’s just that under the merest scrutiny, this episode of Doctor Who, like the vessel featured therein, falls apart.

To the last, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip messed things up. It should have been a farewell full of schlock and unashamed sentimentality. Half a dozen intense storylines were queuing up for resolution. The writer, Aaron Sorkin, was a past master at this, penning four triumphant finales for The West Wing.

And yet even here, at the last hurdle, with no distance left to run (the show already cancelled by its American network) and no time left for half-measures and screw-ups, even here Studio 60 got it wrong.

Plots were dispatched into oblivion with all the aplomb of someone ticking off their weekly shopping list. Characters spoke wholly in platitudes. Nothing built to a climax; everything melted into banality. And barely once, in this supposedly definitive take on the mechanics of the American TV industry, was television mentioned.

To those who made it this far, who had travelled with the show through its ludicrously convulsed existence, the relief was akin to it being the end of a school term. Free! Free at last! For it had become apparent, very quickly after the first episode, there was little reason to stick with Studio 60 other than out of duty, and the hope of the odd flash of genius. Then, as the weeks skulked by, there emerged a perverse pleasure in seeing what tawdry gimmick or (presumably) self-deprecating cliché Sorkin would deploy this time around.

“Let’s see”, you liked to imagine him thinking, “we’ve had the drug addiction episode, the getting-locked-on-the-roof episode, the let’s-hire-a-black-writer episode. What’s left? How about … pregnancy?”.

The moment when president of fictional TV network NBS Jordan McDeere suddenly announced, completely out of nowhere, she was having a baby was one of the foulest pieces of TV possible. Utterly cynical if intended to be genuine, completely smug if conceived to be ironic, this was real jump-the-shark time: horrifying, yet also strangely fascinating, to watch right before your eyes.

After that there was no chance of redemption. This was a ship going down with all hands. Each episode became less and less about a TV show and more about ghastly relationships between ghastly people, punctuated with endless contradictory political diatribes. Every 30 seconds came the sound of someone clearing their throat to air another of Sorkin’s obsessions. Except these perorations were a world away from the informed, uplifting chatter of The West Wing. At times there was so much hatred on screen you could imagine viewers switching off in their thousands, asking, “What have we done to offend this man?”.

And while there was no concessions were made for people arriving halfway through the series, or who might have missed an episode, there was equally precious little reward meted out to those who stayed the course. We were treated like dunces, happy to overlook 180-degree personality changes and storylines conjured up and hastened away all in a matter of seconds.

Being generous you could argue this was partly to do with the way the series materialised during its one and only American transmission. While it unfolded in an uninterrupted 22-week run over here, over there it emerged in fits and starts, the first 10 episodes followed by a seven-week gap followed by five more episodes followed by a whopping three-month gap followed by a final six episodes.

Yet this only came to pass because the show was flawed in the first place. Its fascination with clever-clever plotting precluded the emergence of plausible, attractive characters and a likeable, intriguing setting. Sorkin and his regular cohort, director Thomas Schlamme, had nobody to blame but themselves. They knew how the TV industry worked (heavens, they were producing an entire series about the very thing!), and they knew their show would be threatened with cancellation if it flopped and temporarily taken off air.

Which it duly was, hence the hiatus in transmission, hence the air of panic, and hence the compounding of an already noxious brew with evermore hysterical ingredients.

Along came the war, in the guise of one of the cast’s brothers who was suddenly serving in Afghanistan. Along came, ho ho, “trouble with falling ratings”. Along came industrial action and religious fundamentalism and dangerous animals loose under the stage and weddings and people learning to pray (learning to pray?!?!) and premature babies and an utterly demented episode which didn’t feature any of the main characters and instead had Alison Janney from The West Wing appearing as herself alongside a person her character used to date in The West Wing but who now played someone who had a crush on Alison Janney overlooking the fact that previous episodes referred to The West Wing as if it were real and that Alison Janney didn’t actually exist.

There was twisted appeal in the savage lunacy of it all. As scene after scene fixated on America’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, you sat agape at something you’d never expect to see in a mainstream American television drama – and also at something you’d never expect to see being done so crassly by such noted Hollywood luminaries.

The last five episodes depicted the events of one single night: an audacious stunt Sorkin never dared try in The West Wing, and perpetrated here as much – you felt – for the sake of it as anything else. There certainly wasn’t the momentum to sustain interest in the same events over a quintet of shows, and as the plot entertained crisis upon crisis it was a bit like watching somebody’s artistic reputation self-combust in slow motion.

Studio 60 ended its life as one massive fuck you to us, to America, to television, to anyone and everyone. With every final crude dramatic revelation or hackneyed turn of dialogue another chunk of Sorkin’s legacy came tumbling to the ground. Except each sound you heard wasn’t that of falling masonry, it was of another TV fan’s heart breaking.

This televised modernisation of the story of the birth of Christ kicks off Liverpool Capital of Culture year and was brought to us by the people behind Easter’s Manchester Passion. However, it was logistically an even more complex prospect than the crucifixion; narrated in front of a crowd by joyous MC Geoffrey Hughes as the Angel Gabriel from a stage at the bottom of William Brown Street, his commentary and shouting intercut with scenes set in other parts of Liverpool city centre and beyond. This was everything that might appear in the average school nativity but on a massive scale and with a BBC outside broadcast unit instead of a nervous parent with a camcorder.

In St George’s Hall, Cathy Tyson, aided by some winning Busby Berkley-style dance routines, gave a panto rendition of Herod – in this version a Minister for the Interior bent on chucking out asylum seekers such as the good Joseph. She was visited by the three wise men – who included ex-Chinese Detective David Yip and Joe McGann sporting a rather natty velvet jacket. Up by St Nicholas’s Church, we met the shepherds – Andrew Schofield knocking out a decent rendition of Imagine before being visited by Jennifer Ellison doled up in a silver tracksuit as an angel. Sadly we cut away before seeing the star that would lead them to St John’s Gardens.

The most impressive journey was for Mary and Joseph, who began in the café of the Seacombe Ferry Terminal before travelling across the Mersey by boat (instead of the usual donkey), through the streets of Liverpool and up to the stage. This central couple were rather actually rather convincing – with West End veteran Jodie McNee in particular generating real sympathy for Mary’s plight and clearly in tears at one point. This was some mean achievement when you take into account much of the show was happening across town, the duo had to wait for cues before performing and they had to ensure they reached their goal before the finale.

Most of the songs also worked well, even if the resonance of some of the lyrics was lost, despite the best efforts of the performers – a problem with the microphones led to many of the words not being quite audible. Good job everyone knows the plot. Some thought had clearly gone into the context of the selections – such as the appearance of Mary and child heralded by Lady Madonna – and why not celebrate Liverpool’s musical heritage at an event like this? It’s all a matter of taste, probably, but original composition just would not have worked in this context. It’s far more impressive to have a standing audience that looks like half the population of the city, singing en masse, All You Need is Love.

It was also dead funny – the look on Mary’s face was priceless when Gabriel apparently appeared to her and explained her physical predicament. Ditto her husband, who clearly got the wrong idea. Often the script attempted to burst the expectations of the viewer – when Hughes had to indicate Christ’s parents were taking the ferry across the Mersey he joked, “You might think that’s a cue for a song … well it isn’t.” Schofield, meanwhile, perked up on hearing free food might be available at some point, at which point a fellow shepherd suggested he should stop fulfilling the stereotype. Only some of the material Cathy Tyson had to deal with fell rather flat and listless, but after booing from the crowd, proceedings went right back on track.

I imagine there will still be some viewers who were offended by all this, either because of the appropriation of the key biblical story or a reminder that for some Liverpool is the centre of the universe. But hopefully even they couldn’t deny that, for the most part, this was done with the best of intentions. Everyone involved got into the spirit of the thing, and as the crowd parted to give Mary and Joseph a clear run away from their pursuers, you really could believe that all you need is love.

You could see their point for various reasons which will be become clear, but thankfully, the close of “Volume One” of Heroes was really not as bad as reports suggested, and provided enough gob-smacking moments in its final two chapters to continue stroking my fan gene.

Not that this has been a perfect series by any means. Although the dynamics of the development of super powers in the real world was an interesting idea, whole episodes would pass when the abilities of some of the characters would be talked about an awful lot yet not actually seen in action – undoubtedly for the same budgetary reasons David Banner could only become the Incredible Hulk once an episode. Too often the narrative would drop into a meander, with some stories – such as whatever was going on with Niki that week – dragging somewhat without a clear impression of how they fitted into the main arc of the series. Thankfully there were enough twists to keep things interesting as familial and professional relationships were revealed – Nathan is Claire’s real father! RGB works for Hiro’s Dad! That’s why Sylar kidnapped Molly!

So it’s been a series which has frustrated as much as excited, but these concluding two episodes repaid those viewers who’ve been paying close attention. From incidental pleasures such as seeing heroes who up until now have been living in their own little worlds, no longer isolated and gathering together at the poignantly named Kirby Plaza (a homage to legendary late comic artist Jack Kirby, following on from his collaborator Stan Lee’s cameo in an earlier episode), to the iconic moments expressed in the late artist Isaac Mendez’s paintings throughout the series transforming into film frames. But overall there was a new found fluidity to how the powers were portrayed, with the impression all of the characters have now come to terms with their abilities.

Significantly the much heralded destruction of half of New York did not happen, which is perhaps why some felt short-changed. This, though, is a series about hope, forever reminding its characters that the future is “not set in stone”. Unfortunately this puts fans of time travel fiction into a head-spin as they consider how Future Hiro could visit Peter Petrelli in the train car and warn him to save the cheerleader if said future no longer exists. How come Petrelli didn’t helpfully absorb his time travelling powers at this early stage (unless he did and wasn’t aware of it)? How could Contemporary Hiro visit futures that won’t happen in order to become motivated to change them? And, for that matter, how could the Hiro of the first episode call Ando and get the reaction he did if that Ando had gone through all of those experiences?

With so many of Isaac’s other predictions coming true, it’s entirely possible the holocaust is still to come, especially since Zachary Quinto’s Sylar, like all good villains, managed to slither away. From his initial appearance as late as episode nine, Quinto has been the breakaway star of the series, his sanguinary presence leading to the inevitable impression in most scenes a much-loved character is about to exit the series. Perhaps one of the disappointments some fans had with his vanquishing is that despite his many powers it seemed to come too easily. The smackdown with Peter should have been of Superman II or The Matrix proportions – two titans breaking up the place, and not simply the former nurse pummelling the former clock maker into the ground.

Series creator and writer of this closing episode, Tim Kring, has spent much of the show keeping these heroes hidden from the rest of the world, no doubt so their emergence into the wider public can be worked into a future storyline. Everything from murder to mind control have been used to keep their presence a secret, with sinister individuals and organisations such as the Company and Lindermann on hand to control and take advantage of the situation. Perhaps he’s been eyeing the X-Men film franchise and deciding he doesn’t want to deal with the Heroes version of mutant registration just yet (give it five years).

Nathan Petrelli’s Mika-aided political ascendancy in this closing episode continued the political thread which has run through the series. It seems entirely correct powerful people with actual real power encoded into their DNA would try and influence the decision makers in the country and so the course of humanity’s development. Nevertheless, Petrelli is the ultimate expression of “power corrupts”. One of the most heartbreaking moments of the series occurred when Hiro shouted, “You’re a villain!” at him – the exact opposite of his earlier realisation this was the “flying man”. Nathan seems to be a character who will forever be drifting back and forth from the dark side, his reptilian mother whispering in his ear.

Which isn’t to say these final two episodes weren’t without some eye-popping incidents, from Lindermann’s death by brain-hollowing (Malcolm MacDowell will be missed – this was his best performance in years) to Sylar’s predicted murder of exploding Ted (an amazing, if computer-aided, stunt featuring a rolling van). And those closing moments in which Hiro finally fulfilled his potential in saving the world only to then find himself lost in what looked like a Kurosawa movie was probably and rightly, the cliffhanger of the series hinting Future Hiro might not be the misnomer he at first appeared.

Incidental characters such as Christopher Eccleston’s invisible Claude and Missy Peregrym’s misdirecting Candice were welcome distractions (in more ways than one), but apart from Sylar, Hiro and Ando have been the most compulsively interesting characters. Indeed, Masi Oka and James Kyson Lee’s double act has been one of the joys of the series, and actually it’s those episodes in which they didn’t appear or had little to do which have dragged the most. Predictably Hayden Panettiere did find her feet making Claire Bennet deeply watchable, but who would have thought Jack Colman’s RGB would be so useful? A tragic anti-hero willing to murder a small child to save his adopted daughter.

Of the other regulars it’s a pity Milo Ventimiglia wasn’t allowed to inject more of the dark charisma we saw in Future Peter into the rest of his performance, which generally consisted of mild panic. Similarly, it’s regrettable Jessica appears to have gone since Ali Larter was clearly having much more fun with her deviousness than the rather wet Niki. Mohinder (or as Pete calls him MO-HIN-DAAAH) failed to live up to his potential simply because by design he’s been rather dull, generally buffeted about by the three main sources of villainy, and only really coming out of his shell in the moments he’s been awestruck by the abilities of others – such as discovering the ease with which Molly can find her own kind. However, it’s Greg Grunberg who seems hardest done-by – always exuberant and charismatic during spin-off documentary Heroes Unmasked, his character Matt was too often seen being told what to do by someone, or else standing with a stoop trying to read a mind.

It’s difficult to know what to make of Tim Kring’s public apology for the quality of the second series of the show already reaching its abbreviated run on US TV (made shorter because of the current writers’ strike). Certainly reports haven’t been good, suggesting the narrative meander which infected the first series continues into the second, with a fair few reset levers having been pulled despite the events of this closing episode.

Nonetheless, the short discussion between Claire and Peter in which she favoured going on patrol with her powers, and he said spandex isn’t for him suggests Kring isn’t interested in taking the series in the direction of Sunnydale or Smallville, and has a grander, more realistic, narrative in mind. He just has to be careful not to contract repetitive Lost syndrome, asking too many questions and not providing enough answers, hoping all of the shiny things will distract the viewer from an underlying lack of imagination. Heroes needs to keep moving forward, but reports suggest this might not be the case.

Although, not to the point I won’t actually be tuning in for the rest of “Volume Two” …

At about the same time, a friend of mine was badgering me constantly to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm. “Nah”, I thought, “doesn’t look like my cup of tea at all”. Eventually, I relented and – just to be able to say I’d given it a chance – sat myself down to an episode. Half an hour later, I found myself grudgingly using the words, “You were right”, and berating myself for resisting Larry David’s charms for so long.

Lead Balloon has come to occupy a position that bridges those two stories. Just as I had to cajole people into watching The US Office, so I struggled to enjoy Lead Balloon without subconsciously dubbing Larry David’s voice over the show. Throughout the first series, I struggled in vain to accept Jack Dee’s ongoing claims Lead Balloon was not influenced by Curb. Oh heavens forbid, no! And, to continue The Office parallel, watching Lead Balloon brought to mind Stromberg, the German workplace-based comedy, which the producers insisted was not remotely influenced by Gervais’ efforts. They relented when BBC lawyers came a-knocking.

With this second series, Lead Balloon has hit its stride. Either that or I’ve simply kicked the habit of mentally humming Curb‘s incidental music every time a new scene begins. Not that Dee has made it easy for me to abolish the comparisons – the sight of Rick Spleen stealing flowers from a memorial was astonishing for being exactly what Larry David does in the latest series, recently screened in the US. Plus I must admit in this latest episode, I flinched when the builder character introduced “My wife, Cheryl”. If Dee truly believes Lead Balloon is not remotely influenced by Curb, then writing partner Pete Sinclair must be doing one hell of a job pulling the wool over his eyes.

The thing that finally drew me into Lead Balloon was the realisation Rick Spleen is actually a great character in his own right. Not as loud or as boorish as Larry David, he reacts in a much more understated and, well, British middle-class sort of way. True, he shares many of Larry’s traits, his neuroses, his inability to conceal unhappiness or disappointment, his penchant for taking petty revenge on those who upset him. Spleen’s actions and reactions – not those of people around him – do not stray into the realms of cartoon-ish excess.

Sadly, I have little praise for the supporting cast. The character of Marty, Spleen’s American comedy writing partner, is near-irrelevant. His only function appears to be the one who goes “tut” at Spleen’s whinging, while his one-liners feel hopelessly out of place, conveying a sense someone insisted on occasional gags to ensure people realise it’s a comedy. Likewise, the regular inserts of Spleen writing jokes on a pad seem a pointless diversion from what the show does best. If Marty is meant to be Lead Balloon‘s answer to Richard Lewis, then there is a huge amount of work to do.

Magda, plus Spleen’s daughter and her boyfriend similarly serve little purpose. The East European daily help does little to assist the show, and, like Alan’s girlfriend in series two of I’m Alan Partridge, seems to exist only to allow a string of fairly cheap Borat-style gags about “backward” customs. The daughter and boyfriend, meanwhile, do little at all, other than to make Rick a bit more grumpy … which seems a shame.

This latest episode is triggered by Spleen saving a man from suicide, which leads him to try and milk the story of his heroism – a scenario which nicely shows the vanity of the character. In a rather odd move, the end of the episode reveals the saved man to have been a convicted paedophile, but squanders the opportunity for a backlash against Spleen’s for saving someone so vilified. The ending is doubly strange as it yet again recalls an episode of Curb, in which Larry befriends a man who turns out to be a sex offender, and feels obliged to invite him to a dinner party.

However, the strongest scene in the episode comes when Speen is told the man he has invited to dinner is not the head of drama at ITV – as he thought – but a builder. How he could have made such an error is glossed over, but it does allow a superb sequence showing Spleen’s pretensions, as he tries to hide anything he considers too good for a workman. When capable of attaining such heights, I am able to forgive Lead Balloon its flaws, and this for me was the moment when the show stepped out of the shadows and emerged as a truly enjoyable comedy in its own right.

Shorn of the excesses of Curb (am I the only one who finds that show’s references to Seinfeld hideously clunky?), Lead Balloon reveals traces of true brilliance. Perhaps it would be more palatable to many if they actually did admit the link instead of constantly denying the obvious. After all, it’s infinitely easier to accept Rick Spleen as a British Larry David than to accept Michael Scott as an American David Brent.

Where once the station was cheeky, inconsistent and unpredictable, Countdown was dour, unchanging and suffocatingly polite. It wasn’t so much accommodated in the schedule as reluctantly tolerated. Then, as the channel sharpened up its act and became more professional, slick and business-like, Countdown‘s profile mutated into that of a slightly shambolic, harmless cult. It was indulged for its whims and begrudged for its following.

Finally, as the century turned and C4 homogenised into a mainstream, mass market entertainment channel competing with, rather than complementing, its rivals, Countdown ended up the jester at the court. It was the survivor, defying all knockers and naysayers and numerous relaunches, overcoming not just the death of its founding host and ambassadorial raconteur, but also the departure of a second, equally-iconic, front man. Now, where everything around it seems bland and never-changing, Countdown – partly by default and partly by design – feels more alive and distinctive than ever.

This, the 25th birthday show, was always going to amount to more of a whirling dervish of whimsy than usual. It was a good job, though, that O’Connor and not Lynam was in charge of revels, or else, going off the evidence of last year, things would have been a Des-aster.

While his predecessor never appeared to care much for the show’s legacy or the devotion of its followers, O’Connor has, since taking over, been far more comfortable playing to the gallery. In other words, letting Carol be the star turn and the viewers’ champion, while settling for the rank of stooge and put-upon breadwinner.

Des was in his element here, ringleading the celebrations and cueing in an unexpectedly non-ironic roll call of celebrity well-wishers. The principal treat at this birthday feast, here were premier league personalities conferring sincere felicitations via This Is Your Life-style video “messages”, united in their well-meaning praise and by a judicious invitation, to which they all acceded, to pick letters and numbers on behalf of the studio contestants.

This made for some dashingly surreal moments, as the likes of no less a regal presence as Lord Richard Attenborough, Lord David Puttnam and Sir Terence of Wogan took turns to pick either consonants or vowels, while Carol gamely pretended to “talk” to them as if everything was happening live, like Noel Edmonds used to do in the celebrity rounds of Telly Addicts.

Speaking of whom, the man himself elbowed in from “the Dream Factory, here in Bristol”, replete with a bit of telephonic nonsense from the Banker. Patrick Moore erupted into shot from within a giant flowery shirt. Alex Ferguson petulantly insisted he “actually does quite well, by the way” when “playing along at home”.

Members of Emmerdale and Coronation Street clowned – as is law whenever soap opera casts do inserts for other programmes – through raucous congratulations. Amir Khan, fulfilling the role of “trendy young celebrity”, pledged his support. Even Gordon Brown looked in from Downing Street, crediting the show for helping to promote numeracy and literacy, for being “really good exercise on my mind”, and also to wish that Carol could have – ho ho – helped him with his “sums” while Chancellor.

All this was done with such grace and good nature that only people with no soul would have failed to be touched. Apart, that is, from the reappearance of Brown, this time being played by Rory Bremner and soaked in all that familiar, tired “fiddle the figures” and “got rid of the old boss” gaggery. Why the man seems forever willing to hire himself out to any occasion going, no matter how undignified and unnecessary, is a conundrum as inscrutable as, well, “SMILEMORE”.

Which nobody in the studio got – it turned out to be the far-from ubiquitous word “SOMMELIER”.

For amidst all the hoopla there was indeed a battle of sorts being played out, but it wasn’t that edifying or consequential, being between two former champions competing for pride and the self-declared intent to see who could offer up the most preposterously lofty and unfamiliar words possible.

“Geraniol”, “manque” and “droseras” were amongst the purposefully arch (and hence unappealing) weapons deployed by the joyless contestants, who at least conformed to tradition by virtue of being on the one hand a “bit of a joker” and on the other a unappealingly brainy teenager. With a permanent frown. “I think I saw a bit of a smile there,” cracked Des half-threateningly, when the child clinched victory.

Everything else was pure embellishment. “I’ve had quite a few requests to wear my birthday suit,” teased Carol. This turned out to be the outfit she wore on the very first edition, a quarter of a century ago. “Tie granddad down,” goofed Des. Julie Andrews sent her best wishes and thanks for helping her “spelling and math (sic)”. And clippage of Richard Whiteley was resurrected from the archive. Rather than all the proverbial business from Wetwang to “wankers”, this turned out to be just one scene of the great man, trying (and failing) to read out a letter without corpsing. Simple, flattering, and perfect.

Countdown is currently sponsored by Digital UK, the government campaign to raise awareness about the forthcoming digital TV switchover. On its present form, and with a fair wind, the show deserves to still be flourishing when the very last analogue signal is turned off. Which, appropriately enough, should be round about 2 November, 2012.

American TV does this in a way few contemporary British shows can. Its comedy series have an almost blissful disposability and weightlessness that, unlike their UK counterparts, don’t involve shoddy production, dishevelled plotting or lazy characterisation.

Quite the reverse, in fact. Shows about nothing will often have everything going for them. Seinfeld was one; Frasier another. Curb Your Enthusiasm and Scrubs are continuing the pattern. There’s almost a history in the States for comedies that marry cleverness with buoyancy, which don’t presume to do anything but entertain, yet respect the viewer enough to do so with spark and professionalism.

Watching a decent US sitcom is akin to cleansing your palate of any grit and stodge built up from a diet of too much overblown, underdone home-grown television. The ideal show arrives, does it business then takes its leave. It has the courtesy to, if not always make you laugh, then at least carry itself with style. You switch off having felt flattered, not lectured. And you know you’ll be back for more.

30 Rock, excitingly, looks like being the latest of its kind to tick all these boxes. Set behind the scenes of a fictional Friday night live variety show, it shares a near-identical premise with Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Indeed, both series debuted in America at almost exactly the same time. But that, fortunately, is where the comparisons end.

For there is no earnest proselytising or clever-clever wordplay or tedious self-analysis here. Neither are there torturous attempts to both celebrate and denigrate the television industry simultaneously. Rather, 30 Rock – named after the address of NBC, 30 Rockefeller Plaza – spins stories, boasts plausible characters and knows how to tell a good joke. It satirises the minutiae of American showbusiness in such an open-minded way as to seem enlightening to the most parochial of Britons. Plus it’s half the running time of Studio 60. And has twice as many laughs.

To convince the viewer of all this in just one episode is no mean feat. But to do so in the pilot episode alone – well, that deserves an even bigger doff of the hat. And a particularly recalcitrant British bowler to boot.

The magic seemed to work from the very start. Cameras swooping down the streets of New York, arcane 1950s-esque Americana music playing, a distinctly normal-looking woman arguing about queue etiquette by a hot dog stand, a hubbub of pedants taking sides over who was right or wrong … Sure, it may well have been brainstormed and rewritten and amended and edited by a battery of producers over a matter of months, even years, but it worked. You were sold, instantly.

The woman in question turned out to be Liz Lemon, head writer on The Girlie Show, NBC’s weekend curtain raiser and your average (to an Englishman’s eyes) satirical revue. As her day continued, Liz – hugely likeable, unashamedly knowing and dependably harassed – was shown dealing with self-obsessed stars, self-promoting writers and self-motivated superiors. In short, a building entirely stocked up with sitcom gold.

Central to her extraordinary world was a supremely ordinary crisis: the arrival of a new boss. A deeply familiar comic scenario, yes; but one handled here with champion freshness and spirit.

The sparring between Liz, played by the show’s creator and main writer Tina Fey, and her new overlord, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), was the episode’s all-important backbone. He wanted to “retool” The Girlie Show around a wise-talking black comic he’d met on a plane. She was horrified. He observed she had “the boldness of a much younger woman”. She refused to don his choice of clothing, claiming it made her look like “the President of the Philippines”. He ordered her to have lunch with his new choice of star. She ended up sidetracked into visiting a ludicrously stereotyped strip club populated by ludicrously stereotyped black punters and desperately giving money to the female performers “for computer classes”.

Somehow everyone made it back to the studio in time for transmission. Jack’s protégé, Tracy Jordan, inevitably ended up stealing the show. The audience went wild. The rest of the cast fumed. Liz threw a plastic bottle at Jack. The stage was set for a showdown … and the credits rolled.

Baldwin was splendid as the husky-voiced, melodramatic, second-guessing schmooze. This role should see him good for a few years. Tracy Morgan as Tracy Jordan appears to be making a decent enough job of parodying a parody: normally something to be avoided at all costs. And Tina Fey is simply a revelation. It’s such a relief to watch an American sitcom and not find a leading lady who is sassy, blousy, the stooge or just thick.

It was unsubtle. It was, at times, crude. It wasn’t an even ride to the end. Yet even before 30 Rock was over you knew this was a programme you were happy to be with. Better still, you knew there were another 20 episodes queued up behind it, waiting to be with you in return.

Which is an obvious statement, perhaps, but curiously reassuring. It comes back to the way American television flatters you in a manner quite unlike anything produced here. Rarely do quantity and quality enjoy parity this side of the Atlantic. Over there, it’s a given. It might mean two-dozen episodes of unremitting schlock. It might mean two-dozen episodes of unrelenting gold. But you get your fill either way. And in the case of 30 Rock, that’s a reason for unconfined joy.

Where once a bit of occasional wealth redistribution and thumping sufficed to occupy the lives of Sherwood Forest’s resident street-talking bumpkins, now it seems nothing less than national salvation is the order of the day. It’s a big step up from the recovery of a side order of gammon. It’s a sharp change in direction from merely running after bullies in black cloaks. It is, in other words, a second series.

Ultimately what let down last year’s resurrection of Robin Hood was its limited scale. It ran out of places to go, both literally (the UK’s largest forest turning out to be frustratingly compact) and thematically.

Every week our heroes found themselves pitted against the machinations of the Sheriff, which was fair enough, but every week they never seemed to learn anything from their escapades, which wasn’t. Characters evolved, but artificially rather than organically. All momentum got frittered away. There was precious little trace of ambition, of storylines exploring grand themes of good and evil or hope and despair. Everything was just of the wrong magnitude.

It meant that what stuck most in the mind were the anachronisms, which made for the worst possible landscape upon which to fashion a follow-up. The 21st century slang, the contemporary mores, the numerous references to partially-topical talking points (“Regime change”, “mass destruction”) – they wouldn’t have mattered so much were they not so distinguished by their prominence, especially in contrast to the programme’s less ubiquitous grasp on medieval scene-setting.

So it’s good that certain changes have been made. Something needed to be done, if only to demonstrate the team behind the series were aware that, well, something needed to be done. Except what appears to have transpired is not a dilution of the problem, but rather an intensification.

On the evidence of this first episode, characters have become even less dimensional and even more prone to acting merely as ciphers. Aside from Robin and Marian, whose relationship is not immune from being reduced to clumsy metaphors, everybody else is a walking plot point. Their very purpose, their very existence in this fictional recreation of the real world of 13th century England, is to move events from A to B to C. Nothing more.

It means the roaring, vituperative, unpredictable monster that is, by legend, the Sheriff of Nottingham appears on screen as little more than the Hooded Claw, wholly occupied with engineering bland strategies of retribution that never work, and from whose failure he draws no heed.

Accordingly his “grand plan” for this series – to kill the King and take over the whole country – got soundly robbed of any dramatic scope and potential. The sequence of him assembling his “Black Knights” for a secret conference felt nowhere near as fearsome as it should. Keith Allen’s performance was more hollow than hair-raising.

The episode’s “very special guest” (a gimmick set to continue throughout the series), the Sheriff’s sister, was equally ineffectual. She did little other than scream dementedly or strut around looking haughty, in an attempt to try and outdo her brother by way of over-the-top scene-stealing. Saturday night drama doesn’t – shouldn’t – always have to major in subtly, but resorting to such devices as having a de facto wicked witch completely fool your hero by dressing up as a peasant, then stringing him up above a pit full of poisonous snakes, felt perilously close to just lazy storytelling.

It’s with Robin’s gang, though, that the main disappointment lay. It’s much the same problem as before. They remain a bunch of people for whom you have neither much time nor respect. By rights, depending on your age, you should either want to be one of them, look forward with knowing expectation to their inevitable arrival in the nick of time, or simply enjoy their swashbuckling antics. Any one of these three remains unlikely, however, so long as they continue to be drawn on screen in ultra-bland strokes, rarely speaking except to agree or disagree with their leader (“You were right all along, Master Robin!”). Worst of the lot is Much, who’s still depicted a bumbling, put-upon ditherer. Despite their respective characters’ history of fighting together in the Crusades, the question remains: why on Earth would Robin want such a person in his band?

Robin and Marian provided the limited strength of this episode, as indeed they did for most of the first series. Their verbal and physical sparring should be the foundation for any number of elaborately constructed plots – or so you feel. Both are competently played, both are plausibly written, and it’s here the real possibility lies for expanding the concerns of the show beyond simply yet another battle/ambush/escape.

There’s no reason why it couldn’t still happen. Something is required, though, to avoid proceedings repeating last year’s habit of settling into a kind of self-obsessed inertia. A subplot, tentatively begun in this episode, involving Robin’s cohort Allan A Dale being bribed to spy on his own side might inject some zest. Maybe the weekly guest stars will help broaden the emotional canvas.

If, however, the ambition of this self-styled “spirit of England” is never going to extend much beyond outlaws exchanging Two Ronnies catchphrases (“So it’s goodnight from me …”, “… And it’s goodnight from him”), then it’s doubtful this second series will get, let alone deserve, a third.

Presumably they had grown tired, albeit momentarily, of over-hyping the first most over-egged story of the summer, and thought a photograph of a plucky Michael Palin made a change from a photograph of the back of Kate McCann’s head. For it was he, apparently, at the centre of this latest “storm”, the latest in “a long line” of “scandalous” revelations concerning standards and practices at the BBC.

What was the nature of this terrible crime? Just how had “the nation’s favourite traveller” conspired to dupe, mislead and generally outrage the unquestioning minds of his viewers? Why, by interrupting the shooting of his latest televised voyage to, gasp, “fly home”. Yes. You read that right. On a break between filming, our man boarded a plane and, instead of kicking around doing nothing in a desolate corner of Eastern Europe, popped home to see his family, do a bit of work, meet a few people and generally get on with living his life. Diabolical behaviour, naturally.

For heaven’s sake, has it really come to this? Has the business, or rather the art, of programme-making lost so much value and wonder as to be found wanting for presuming to be art rather than merely artless? Must everything that is involved in crafting a piece of television be sacrificed in some kind of McCarthy-esque holier-than-thou witch trial?

If so, what have you got left? Because television does, by its very definition, have to be crafted. That’s the whole point. It’s a customised form of entertainment, just like the pages of a newspaper are customised to best fit their layout and the words of this review are customised to best fit the argument its writer is trying to make.

This entire debate has moved beyond any useful consideration of a broadcaster’s responsibility to admit mistakes during live transmissions to a hysterical naming and shaming of techniques upon which the entire history of television has been built. What, you wonder, would those journalists prefer: an unedited, disorganised, unstructured set of sequences with Palin out of focus or stumbling over words or standing in someone’s way or discussing procedure with the director; or a carefully planned, expertly executed and seamlessly edited series that allows both traveller and environment to make the most of their medium?

Maybe it’s just Palin’s turn to be knocked. Maybe Mark Lawson is behind it all, seeing as how he’s been joylessly moaning about the artifice behind these kind of travelogues ever since Around the World in 80 Days. Perhaps Lawson enjoys only watching television where you can see the joins. In which case he would have hated the first episode of Michael Palin’s New Europe, and would have rushed off to pen another earnest theory on how the only true form of media is one where the lone voice (ie. him) brutalises rather than cultivates the limitations of the small screen.

The fact is it matters not a jot when or how this series was made. The beauty of its images and the power of its narrative surmount each and every possible quibble over whether what we’re seeing is the second or 22nd take of the day. What’s more, unlike each of his previous travelogues, Palin doesn’t even have a cartographical hook to hang all his observations upon. He is simply dropping in and out of Eastern Europe, dispatching observations as and when the occasion demands, and not – as was particularly the case with Sahara and Himalaya – continually having to find ways to frame everything within a brand-enhancing motif.

Thanks to geography being such less of a thematic importance, New Europe allowed, for the first time since Around the World in 80 Days, people and cultures to become Palin’s co-stars. It was really quite restorative to watch this episode and find expositions about this or that “untamed” landscape and “towering” mountain almost non-existent. You can have too much of, well, too much. Here were mere humble topographical propositions; supporting players, almost, to an imaginatively-varied cast of articulate locals, petty concerns, historic rivalries and native tomfoolery.

Palin said he wanted a change from tackling the world’s extremes – so far it looks like his decision to explore more modest surroundings has paid off. It was also adroit to begin the series in the Balkans, a region supplying potent resonance for anybody with a passing knowledge of recent history and providing Michael with a score of affecting tales to tell and people to meet.

The closer he got to flashpoints of the various 1990s wars, the more lucid the programme became. Interviews with residents of Mostar, Belgrade and Sarajevo – from DJs to professional mine clearers to one of a seemingly never-ending supply of avuncular restaurateurs – showed Palin at his best: knowing the right things to say, knowing the right way to say them, and above all knowing when to shut up.

But the less intense moments sparkled as well, typified by our host finding himself on possibly the slowest fishing boat in existence from Croatia to Albania, trapped on board with a skipper prone to belting out extracts of Italian opera at anti-social hours (and volumes), yet nonetheless revelling in the fact “you just don’t get hotel rooms like this”. Such occasions of character-based eccentricity bode well for the quality of future episodes when there won’t be so much raw politics to thicken Palin’s sociological stew.

The one misfire was, ironically, the most undisciplined and ill-sequenced bit of the whole programme: the opening montage of “things to come” that conformed to every possible cliché of a Michael Palin travel series imaginable – Michael jigging with a peasant, Michael taking an unusual public bath, Michael looking discomfited in the presence of an eccentric, Michael rising above the clouds in a hot air balloon … and so on, all set to incongruous dance music. Unnecessary, predictable and noisy, it was everything the subsequent 55 minutes was not, though presumably evidence enough for the fakery mob that Palin and co stand guilty as charged.

But then what does this reviewer know? Rather than continue straight on into this paragraph, he just got up to make a cup of tea, leaving the text for a scandalously incriminating three minutes. Fake! Burn him!