After You've Gone

Please understand that I write this following the broadcast of the first show in this new series from the pen of Fred Baron, the Americal behind My Family.

I really love the casting of Nicholas Lyndhurst and Celia Imrie as the ex-husband and mother of a woman who wants to go off to Africa to "help the poor." They, along with the rest of the well- cast cast do a great job with the material. The writing is clean and the comedy comes from the actual "situations," hence the term situation comedy. Not, unlike far too many programs, from forced innuendo, double entrendre, and other fancy words for "if it really isn't funny, make it smutty!"

Shot in front of a live audience, the laughs come in realistic amounts and at the correct times. I'm going to enjoy watching this one develop over the next several weeks.

WHEN dealing with tragedy and comedy, ancient Greek actors traditionally used masks, so that everyone in the audience would know exactly where they were.

Mouths curving downwards? Some hapless figure would soon be tearing his own eyes out and eviscerating his own giblets, shortly after slaughtering his father and his first born, and getting chased around the stage by three bloodsoaked bints with snakes for hair.

Mouths curving upwards? Prepare for an evening of biting hilarity, mordant satire, withering parody, and enormous phalluses. But if Greek masks were used to accompany the sad farrago that currently passes for entertainment on much British TV, the expressions would surely have to be inverted. Because the serious drama is getting to be laughable nowadays, while much of the comedy has become profoundly tragic.

For an example of sit-trag at its most startlingly inept, look no further than Friday night's debut of After You're Gone. Everything about it was appalling, from the outdated cosiness of its nuclear family set-up, to a cast who apparently thought they were appearing on stage at Harrogate rep in an early-Seventies farce, and who addressed each other not in proper joined-up dialogue, but in an endless series of witless one-liners.

Even the dire warning that it had been "devised by the creator of My Family" hadn't fully prepared me for the sheer toe-curling tweeness of it all, replete with so many weak puns, motherinlaw jokes, and cries of "oh come on mummy ... mummy mummy mummy" that I half- expected the l at e Patrick Cargill to suddenly walk on from the wings, convinced that this was a posthumous edition of Father Dear Father.

I know it's only mid-January, but this must already be the hot favourite for the title of Worst Comedy of 2007, although perhaps my judgment was slightly skewed by the growing realisation that there was something wrong with my chair. It was facing the television set.

Let us first consider the dramatis personae, who collectively formed as toxic a miscast as is ever likely to infest your screen. First among equals was Nicholas Lyndhurst in the role of handyman and estranged husband Jimmy who, despite his cries of "I'm one of the workers," turned in his usual limp, middle-class Gary Sparrow routine (although at least his character in Goodnight Sweetheart lived in the fourth dimension, whereas here he can barely manage one dimension).

Ryan Sampson (as Jimmy's son, Alex) did emerge with his dignity intact, but Celia Imrie's portrayal of Jimmy's mother-in-law Diana (sporting an apron, an item of clothing that's only ever worn in British domestic sitcoms, never in real life) was so recklessly far over the top that she could have been leading the infantry out of the trenches on the first morning of Passchendaele.

Not only was the age gap between the three generations implausibly narrow, but Imrie's poshly spoken yet fishwife-tongued character simply didn't chime true, and she ended up providing more low-grade ham than an entire chain of supermarkets in the run-up to Christmas.

The story lines were equally unbelievable, with daddy and mother- in-law vying for the affections of the teenage children, while mother Ann (Samantha Spiro) ran off with a new boyfriend to a disaster area in Africa (wisely leaving this disaster area behind her).

And although sparkling dialogue can sometimes rescue even the flimsiest of plots, there was no chance of that here, thanks to wretchedly contrived exchanges like "the Buddhists call it tit for tat", "but he gets the tit while I get the tat." The studio audience shrieked so delightedly at that line that I can only assume they were a coach party on day release from a mental asylum, and I was astounded to see from the closing credits that it had taken seven writers to produce this abysmal script.

How can that be? Perhaps they'd all worked together in one room, pacing the floor for inspiration, and some sort of mass concussion had ensued, because surely only a massive collective brain injury could explain a disaster of this calibre.

Or perhaps the finger should ultimately be pointed at executive producer Kenton Allen, a man who I've long regarded as the BBC Comedy's equivalent of I Claudius.

Having inherited The Royle Family in its prime, he was instantly raised shoulderhigh and mistakenly given credit for Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash ' s masterpiece, but where Claudius was smart enough to ride his good fortune and leave well alone, Allen seems dim enough to mistake his luck for talent, and has been tempted to meddle in productions ever since.

I'm told that he had a hands-on role in this one, and he's now provided us with one of the most excruciatingly vacant situation comedies in the BBC's history, after which the only decent thing for him to do would surely be to provide the BBC with a Situation Vacant. And in return, the Corporation should cancel all scheduled broadcasts now, seal the master tapes of the entire series in a lead- lined box, and bury it deep within Sellafield, without delay. Apart from that, it was fantastic.

I think I like this strictly for nolstagic reasons but at the time I do remember liking it then too. I found the characters and scenarios really funny like when the father son were stranded in fancy dress clothes on the streets and an old lady burglar attacking the fathers gormless builder assistant. The acting was good except Dani Harmer who plays the daughter who was really miscast in this. Let's face it, apart from Tracey Beaker, she can't do anything else. I'd say this was very good especially compared to the rubbish comedy shows now.

I really wanted to like this, but I just feel they have made the character of Diana (Celia Imrie) too unlikeable. She has been written as one of those that must try to put everyone down every time she opens her mouth.

After a short time I found myself hating the woman. This is written by the same guy who wrote my family, another comedy I found too uncomfortable. You have to make characters believable.

I believe this is one of the main differences between an American and European comedy, the Americans try to cram gags in where as the Europeans tend to build up a plot and a fall. This is of course an American writer.

In the great scheme it is not so important, many sit-comes come and go, this one will, in my opinion just go.

The series is entertaining, witty, and providing sharp, rember-able humour. The premise is kind of dramatic, so on rewatching it requires to be set aside, to fully enjoy the comedy - a former alcoholic, now divorced, moves back in with his teenager kids, to jointly look after them with his mother in law, because his ex wife went to Africa to practice medicine (and explore a new relationship with a colleague that is everything Jimmy never was). The kids are great, at sneaking around and scheming all sorts of things. Snappy, epic dialogues involving them. Celia Imrie as the stuck up professor and mother in law is quite a thing, but she has affectionate undertones, too. Comfy house, amusing stories, only downside, as mentioned, the personal issues of the father, now a striving repairman with a new girlfriend, a bartender whom he partially neglects. Best characters: the son (so far the best role that actor ever got), and the stingy mother in law. Good afternoon show.