Radio Times

Some television dramas rear up and slap you hard around the face, just begging you to take them on. "Want to come outside? Are you hard enough?'" they might as well be saying. Others, though, are supine yorkshire terriers, snuffling and looking at you with limpid eyes that demand "love me, love me".

Learners (Sunday 11 November, 9:00pm, BBC1) falls into this latter category. It's "comedy drama" (an expression that usually means the makers can't make up their minds what it is, because it's not much of either) centred on a driving school.

Now, many years ago, you young ones, the fine American comic Bob Newhart...

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It's rare for a new comedy series to lob something genuinely unexpected at you. It's usually some kind of panel game where the spontaneous wit feels tired and pedestrian. Or a sketch show desperately trying to wring the last drops of humour out of sideways glances at modern life. Or it might be a sitcom, where the jokes are flagged up about ten minutes in advance thanks to horrendous gurning on the part of the lead characters.

I was unlucky enough to catch that Only Fools and Horses spin-off sitcom, The Green Green Grass, last week. Everyone involved in its production must be completely aware that it's lowest-common-denominator...

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This week, I have decided to abandon my usual approach to the blogging process (ie reviewing programmes that have been broadcast over the past seven days) in favour of sharing/offloading some of the random radio-related thoughts that have been fogging up the windscreen of my consciousness.

There will be no binding theme, no attempt to link each thought with a pithy observation, or even a drawn-out and wildly misjudged observation. Instead, it will be a wholly free-form blogulatory experience. It will be organic. Non-linear. Spontaneous. A bit like jazz, then, but with more references to Ken Dodd*.

To assist in creating the right sort of atmosphere,...

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They say that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit – but I've come up with another theory. The most elementary form of wit can be taught to a child – in fact, a computer could probably regurgitate it without too much trouble. Used to express mild irritation by men over the age of 40, it's usually accompanied by a comical scowl, and takes the form: "I'll xxxxxx YOU, in a minute". Let's just see this in action:

A: Oooh, I could murder a cup of tea. B: I'll murder YOU, in a minute!

A more complex example of the form can threaten to...

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I've never been particularly fond of animals. The nearest my sister and I ever came to having a pet was when my dad won a stuffed toy – an enormous purple dog – at a raffle. We left it in the corner of my sister's bedroom and, for some reason lost in the mists of time, referred to it as "Jesus" while giggling hysterically.

So the Animal Roadshow probably wasn't particularly designed to appeal to me. There were no purple dogs called Jesus. Instead, we have an undersexed gecko, a dog "driving its owner mad", some cute abandoned kittens that can't be bothered to open their...

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The Legal TV channel is nothing if not eclectic. You can see a Judge Judy-style character with the improbable name of Judge Extreme Akim wield a baseball bat with "Justice" written on the side – and no, I'm not speaking metaphorically, he really does – while solving disputes between hyperactive American families. And within a few minutes you can be settling down to several sober, sombre episodes of Crown Court, that festival of facial hair that screened in the mid-1970s during long afternoons on ITV.

Crown Court used to present fictitious cases in front of a real jury, and gave regular work to a host of British...

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Nigella Lawson's latest series sees the "domestic goddess" throwing together haute cuisine in minutes, while juggling a busy work-life schedule and incessantly eyeing up the camera. It's a five-course recipe for annoyance - starting with the infuriating way she talks…

Nigella does nothing so mundane as "putting" her cooking ingredients into a bowl. No, she tumbles in chicken thighs and strews crumble mix (after digesting one of her sumptuous meals, no doubt she expels "gusts" of wind). Maybe it's a disease of TV chefs, but like Jamie Oliver's mockney spluttering and Gordon Ramsay's contrived expletive-scattering, Nigella's increasingly jarring use of "sensual" language is turning her into a self-parody....

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I told a few people that I was going to be reviewing a brand-new reality TV show today, but none of them believed me when I told them what the concept is. I don't suppose I can blame them, really. I mean, who'd guess that a show would ever be made where 12 people suffering from attention deficit disorder compete to secure their place on a team performing quintuple heart bypass surgery?

I'm joking, of course. But seriously, though, who could ever imagine that someone successfully pitched a programme where ten topless models go head to head in subjecting a failing pharmaceuticals company to an intense...

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I once sat in Sir Terry Wogan's chair. Clearly, this is not as exciting as announcing that I once sat in Disraeli's lap, or admitting that I once sat on the Sultan of Brunei's favourite gardener and made him cry. But it's true. And in radio terms - if not in introductory seat-related-revelation terms - it's a blinder. Why? Because this was the very chair from which the enormous Irishman conducts the symphony of superbity that is Wake Up to Wogan, Britain's most popular breakfast show.

Said seat (which I'd been allowed to nestle in during a visit to the studios for a piece I was writing...

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It strikes me as significant that Tony Soprano drove a red Chevy Suburban in the early days of The Sopranos. Throughout the entire six series we saw inside the mind of a Mafia boss who existed on the outskirts. Operating from New Jersey, Tony's "family" were forever expected to genuflect to New York.

But the suburbs are certainly not lacking in action. Supposed utopias, they promise a better life with their barbecues, sprinklers and long driveways.

In the movies, however, the suburban dream usually masks something much more nightmarish. While affectionately pastiched in films like Edward Scissorhands, the animated Over the Hedge and the 1950s-set Read more...

I always feel like an impostor when I watch E4, as if a 15-year-old with a bellybutton ring and footless tights is going to tap me on the shoulder and insist: "Madam, would you move along please, there’s nothing for you here."

Or perhaps she’d just punch me in the mouth, dump me headfirst in a skip, record it and upload the whole sorry episode to YouTube - you know what kids today are like. (I must apologise for using the word "upload", one of the greatest offences against the English language of the past ten years.)

But maybe I’d escape the E4 police with a caution...

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I don't ever remember having much interest in Halloween. As a student I wasn't remotely tempted to don fangs and a pointed hat and terrorise passers-by with displays of drunken behaviour – although I did know a few goths who did that kind of thing all year round.

And I never went trick or treating as a child - I think the unacceptability of getting something for nothing was drilled into me at a very early age. I remember my dad – an imposing gentleman of six foot six – answering the door on Halloween to cries of "trick or treat" and him saying, "I'll have a...

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