Radio Times

Every week I've dared myself to sit through an entire episode of Flight of the Conchords (Tuesday, BBC4). I rarely get very far. Seconds after the title sequence I'm overwhelmed by a restlessness that fatally undermines my resolve.

Flight of the Conchords makes my teeth itch, it makes my scalp want to get up and walk around the room, it makes my eyes want to poke themselves out.

I had such high hopes, too. I enjoy pastiches, if they are done well, and I'd heard Flight of the Conchords' musical parodies were particularly fine. And they are. It's just that there aren't enough of them.

If you haven't seen Flight of the Conchords (and you probably haven't - its audience is tiny, even by multi-channel standards) it's about a half-witted New Zealand folk duo, Bret and Jemaine, and their efforts to find success in New York. It's excruciating. The pair spend episode after episode locked in endless circular arguments, bickering to the point of idiocy. Nothing happens, which usually doesn't matter in a comedy. But in Flight of the Conchords nothing happens in an unfunny way. It's been compared to Curb Your Enthusiasm, to which I can only weep and stutter "You must be joking!"

The leaden, laboured Kath & Kim (Thursday, Living) similarly arouses my ire. I know it's a "cult" hit, but to me "cult" means "not funny".

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In a fairly dull week, as the TV companies keep their powder dry for Christmas, Spooks provides a beacon in the darkness. Of course, it's nonsense (former MI5 head Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller was very sniffy about it on Desert Island Discs recently) but I'm sure no-one involved would ever hold it up as some kind of spies training video.

In the penultimate episode (Tuesday, BBC1), the Spooks are targeted by a hitman. He wants them all dead and comes up with an absurdly convoluted scheme to gather them all together in the same place before he strikes. It seems to me a very labour-intensive way of carrying out a mass assassination, but luckily I know little of such things.

There can be few things on earth more deadly than listening to sportsmen and women talking about sport, so the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year (Sunday, BBC1) is to be avoided at all costs. As is Blue Murder (Monday, ITV1), the lame cop drama starring Caroline Quentin. It tries to make a virtue of its very ordinariness but just ends up being tedious.

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Alison Graham is TV editor of Radio Times.

Its not your fault you cant appreciate subtle and fine comedy. I bet you didnt really get the office either. F o the C as they are known to those in the know, are great musicians and comedians with perfect comic timing. The only point I would agree with is that their music isnt featured enough in the TV series. But thats hardly a negative is it? We want more is never bad? Alison needs to stick to her own generations comedy - last of the summer wine is right up her street, I'm sure. ;)

I agree with Mike you should sit through anything and everything that you are asked, after all it is your job.

I mean when i am at work i don't start writing a report and then say:- 'well this is fantastically difficult, I can't be bothered lets watch spooks...'

To do this would result in the loss of my job, not that i am suggesting anything...

someone can't appreciate brilliance.

I must say as a T.V. Editor at the radio times you of all people should be able to sit through anything for more than a few seconds after all there is so much drivel on T.V these days e.g Sppoks. I can't believe that a person in your position can freely admit to not watching an entire show of a series then giving it a review that is what i find ridiculous: 'It makes my teeth itch, it makes my scalp want to get up and walk around the room, it makes my eyes want to poke themselves out.'

I do not watch this. However, I disagreed with the comments about 'Blue Murder.' I find, that Caroline Quention, brings, a warmth, and practicality, to the series, which is lacking in other crime shows. It is also, refreshingly, free of obscenities, for which the current euphemism, is 'Strong Language.'

I tried Spooks, but found it irritatingly slick, and preoccupied with superficial good looks, and is now very violent. M!5 is unimpressed with it, apparently.

Ms Graham, could try using less pretentious language. I agree with very few of her comments, on Christmas programmes. Celine Dion particarly, has her merits, as do After You've Gone,' and 'My Family,' to name three. '

The Old Curiosity Shop,' looks good, as does 'Sense And Sensibility.

I think you'd better stick to Catherine Tate or whatever utter gash you seem to find funny.

PS: Curb Your Enthusiasm is vastly overrated.

Flight of the Conchords sound great. I must watch it sometime.

I actually stopped watching Spooks in the middle of an episode, it was so bad. It was not so much the acting (Rupert Penry-Jones plays himself so well and Robert Vaughan is grea... oh hang on, that was the other one), but the plots seemed to have been copied from some GCSE coursework.

The story (as i recall) involved a mid-air collision between a cargo plane (carrying 24-esque nerve agent) and an advanced US military fighter. The spooks infiltrated some demonstrators at a US base, got inside the base (past the most inept securty) and were able not only to enter the cockpit of the crashed cargo plane (which was in remarkably good condition considering it was a crashed cargo plane), but also enter the cockpit of the top secret advanced US military fighter and download some stuff from its computers. I don't know how it finished as it was at this point I decided not to watch Spooks anymore and turned over.

Spooks jumped the shark while combing its hair and saying 'Heeeeeyyyyyyyy' to Howard Cunningham.

Flight of the conchords is great. The best comedy of 2007.

Clearly Alison Graham is of a very different humour generation if she fails to understand the subtle pleasure of Flight of the Conchords. The duo and their surrounding character entourage has been a real highlight of this television year. In terms of comparisons, I don't personally feel it is fair to measure it against either Curb or Kath & Kim, each show is unique in style.

As for Spooks, I stopped watching when the shark was jumped back at the end of series 3. It does sound as though things haven't improved however as the reviewer uses the phrase 'absurdly convoluted' to describe a plot line - and this is with Alison Graham being an advocade of the show!

I think the fact that Alison regards Spooks as a "beacon in the darkness" says it all really.

Funny stuff! :-)

I totally agree with the above user - I love Flight of the Conchords. It's funny in a different way from conventional one-liner sitcoms, which is refreshing. You have to laugh at the uncomfortable silences and naivety of Bret and Jemaine, the low budget production and their willingness to satirise racism in the states. I don't understand how it can be compared to Kath and Kim though - I find THAT excrutiating.

Funny how two people can see things so differently, isn't it! Flight of the Conchords is absolutely my favourite show of 2007, bar none. I only have to hear Murray speak and I'm starting to chuckle...

The current season of Spooks, on the other hand, has completely bored me rigid (which is a shame, as I've enjoyed it a lot in years gone by). I haven't even bothered trying the last two or three episodes, I just can't make myself care about the increasingly one-dimensional characters involved.

Neither show makes any attempt to be "realistic", but for me Conchords works wonderfully while Spooks this season utterly fails to suspend my disbelief.