A Bear's Christmas Tail

This Christmas Special made by the creators of Bo' Selecta! continued the series pretty much, only this time The Bear (Leigh Francis, or Avid Merrion) having his own show. This show was the start of his own TV series as well not long afterwards, A Bear's Tail. Basically The Bear is accidentally hit by Helen Hennerson's (Patsy Kensit) car, and soon she lets him stay at her house with her family. The family are Richard Hennerson (Sean Pertwee) and Lillian Hennerson (Yasmin Kerr). Also starring Davina McCall as Dave Ian McCall, a transsexual, Nick Moran as The Scriptwriter, Kirsty Gallacher as Goldilocks, Ozzy Rezat, Craig Phillips, Jack, Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne and Dermot O'Leary. A good start for The Bear to have his own TV series!

Leigh Francis is better known as Avid Merrion from the BO SELECTA series . Avid is a celebrity stalker who likes to pull stunts on unsuspecting minor celebrities . Of course the world of British showbiz soon cottoned onto him which means there's no more unsuspecting celebrity victims left , indeed there's people queuing up to take part in Francis shows . Series three of BO SELECTA reflects this , the format has been changed to a chat show and with the exception of Mel B and Michael Jackson there's little in the way of laughs since most of the humour from the first two series came about because the celebrity victims genuinely thought they were being stalked by a Romanian madman

Like series three A BEAR'S Christmas TAIL is disappointing and self indulgent . The bear from the woods narrowly misses being run down on a road and is found by the Hennerson family who take him home where the bear runs amok after the family leave to do some Christmas shopping . We have a fractured storyline featuring Mel B and Michael Jackson appearing in a version of THE WIZARD OF OZ and this is the best part of the show , but I'm afraid that isn't saying very much . Some of the humour is rather embarrassing not because of the content but because of its self indulgent air like the bear running into a cupboard telling Nick Moran's scriptwriter to put things into the story

Leigh Francis is a very talented guy but he seems to be too stuck on his BO SELECTA creations . Perhaps now would be a good time to move onto pastures new ? I noticed Francis played an Asian film buff who pesters customers in video shops - " Seen that . That's business class " - and perhaps we could see this character developed into a full blown character he hangs around video stores annoying unsuspecting members of the public