A trifle uncool

I appreciate that it's a flawed concept and whoever described it as innovative must have missed The Office, Extras and Drop the Dead Donkey but I have been laughing out loud at ITV's Moving Wallpaper.

The key here is to ignore the fact that it bears virtually no resemblance at all to the reality of making a soap and just sit back and enjoy the general silliness, the lazy but still funny TV “in jokes” and the central clown performance of Ben Miller, whose character is about as believable as the scenario but still makes me chuckle.

The spoof on Casualty was spot on to the extent that here at Hogan Towers we found ourselves laughing at it all over again while watching the Holby drama on Saturday night.

The point is that this daft spoof of a soap opera production team shouldn't really work at all but they've managed to pull it of somehow. What doesn't work is companion show Echo Beach.

If the idea was to make a terrible soap to tie in with the comedy then it's just not bad enough to be funny. If the idea was to produce something good they've failed there too. Perhaps the problem is that no one has told the cast what it's actually supposed to be.

Jason Donovan appears to be playing it straight and tragically he seems to be the best thing in it, which speaks volumes. Johnny Briggs has a Cornish accent that he seems to have picked up from watching creaky old black and white pirate movies, while a similarly bad accent comes from the pub landlady – Bridget the midget from early Grange Hill.

Hugo Speer is such a panto villain that we get the urge to boo every time he appears on screen, while Martine McCutcheon has been woefully miscast as a middle-aged mum of teenage nippers. We can only hope for the sake of her reputation that the Sunset Beach style of acting she seems to have adopted is intentional.

The younger members of the cast, those are supposed to fool us into thinking we're watching The O.C., are all incredibly wooden and herein lies the problem. Have they intentionally made this soap as crap as possible and if so, how can they possibly expect us to watch it? The only fun to be had here is in spotting the references from the comedy show but beyond that there is very little point at all. This is so sub-standard, I wouldn't inflict it on a daytime audience.

Not so Happy

Al Murray's Happy Hour returned and was so formulaic that you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching a repeat. Perhaps it's time Al realised that he's milked the Pub Landlord character to death now and came up with a different concept.

For the moment though we face a show with the same catchphrases and jokes every week and guests who are merely there as props from the delivery of some rather weak puns and cheap laughs. It's a format that is a bit of strait jacket really. Cerys Matthews looked clearly uncomfortable at being on the end of some the crude gags but I suppose the host had no option but to plough on with them. Worse was to come though when she had to sing a Queen song at the end and gave a performance so shockingly bad she wouldn't have got through the first round of The X Factor with it.

Getting the studio audience to shout “Phwoar” at Barbara Windsor is never inventive, clever or funny and it was left to James Blunt to provide any sort of entertainment, putting Al on the back foot as he had done Clarkson a few weeks back on Top Gear by showing that he was far better at taking the mickey out of himself than Al was. The added bonus was that he didn't sing.

Nothing on offer here then to trouble Friday Night with Jonathan Ross where typewriter-collecting Tom Hanks came across as a typically ill-informed American tourist. We were taking bets about whether there would be a Dick Van Dyke reference, so shockingly bad were Hanks's attempts at British accents. Sure enough we got one.

Ross seemed entirely uncomfortable interviewing Hanks, which made it compelling television.

Everybody walk the dinosaur

Claudia Brown has been wiped from existence, which has greatly perturbed Professor Nick Cutter but highly delighted the nation's seven-year-olds. The ankle-biters are right to be pleased; she was a very boring character indeed, so the sighs of disappointment abound when she popped up at the end of Primeval calling herself "Jenny".

To be honest, the plots are completely superfluous anyway. We're just tuning in to see macho blokes running away from CGI monsters and Hannah S-Club walking about the place in her pants. Except that Hannah isn't walking about in her skimpies anymore. That's got to be a couple of million viewers lost for a start. If she's not going to do that anymore, she might as well have suffered the same fate as Claudia. She's clearly not in the cast for her acting skills.

It's all highly expensive-looking garbage but it works as telly to have on in the background while you get ready for a night out or to keep the kids off the Wii for an hour.

Look at the size of Liam's chopper

High drama in Coronation Street as soap's most gormless couple Liam and Maria managed to get themselves lost on the fells and Liam suffered a dangerous fall. We haven't seen that storyline done since Waterloo Road about a month ago.

Poor Liam had to spend an episode and a half lying around lifelessly. Not much change there then. Maria got all upset because her beloved was calling for Carla. At Hogan Towers, we suspect he was actually calling for lager but then what do we know?

Kevin's impressive demolition of Weatherfield's Only English Teacher, creepy John, has landed him in the clink. We'll be watching keenly for signs of a sun tan when he returns. As if boring, usually law-abiding Kev being sent down wasn't earth-shaking enough, we now have to deal with Demonic David finding a love life. This can't be good news for anyone involved. Surely he can't be allowed to breed. Something must be done.

Jack's all right

It seems we can't go very long in EastEnders without Phil Mitchell having a feud with someone, initially for no apparent reason. The bloated one's latest attempt at proving he's the biggest ape in the Square has resulted in him robbing his own mum of her car lot, in Kevin Wicks wearing a wooden overcoat and in little Darren ending up running a used car business. All highly believable.

Of far more interest has been Jo Joyner's marvellous performance as Tanya has had to deal with the consequences of Max's betrayal. The latest victim of this has been her drug-addled sister Raine, whose fleeting visit was cut short by a drugs test. Meanwhile, Bradley has fled the Square completely. We'll be watching keenly for signs of a sun tan when he returns.

The times they are a-changing

I didn't mind the idea of two doses of Corrie in one night on special occasions when the denouement of a major storyline demanded it. When it became an every Monday occurrence, it rankled with me to such an extent that often I wouldn't bother with both episodes or sometimes either. Now it's going to be a regular Friday thing as well and quite frankly, I haven't got the patience. A case in point was this Friday when I decided that Jam and Jerusalem would be a more rewarding watch.

A regular hour-long Emmerdale when there is no major drama or spectacular stunt to showcase also seems like a bridge too far. You can certainly have too much of a good thing. If scheduling demands the dropping of the Sunday episodes, why not just drop them altogether? Let's get back to quality instead of quantity please.

Nobody here but us chickens

It probably wasn't a good idea to watch Channel 4 with a bargain bucket from the KFC this week as Huge Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver tried – I suspect in vain – to get us to care about the state of the nation's chickens.

Huge clicked off by telling us how terrible it was that Tesco's could sell two chickens for a fiver. It's a good job they scheduled this after my local branch had closed because my initial reaction was to jump in the car and go and fill the freezer. To his credit Huge didn't flinch from facing head on this sort of attitude.

He set about an experiment whereby he set up his own intensive chicken coop while he got a group of people to set about raising free range chickens. The results were predictable. Ill-looking, overly cramped birds were the result of the intensive farm, with our hero getting really tearful as he has to put the birds suffering the most out of their misery. Meanwhile the free range birds seemed far happier – if indeed creatures with a brain the size of a pea have a concept of happy – but those keeping them inevitably got attached to their charges and tears flowed liberally when it came time for the slaughter.

Hugh's aim was to turn the town of Axminster free range but the size of his task hit him in the face like a wet chicken when he caught one of his free range farmers buying the two for a fiver birds.

That's the point really. It really doesn't matter how much pontificating these rich telly chefs do. No matter who much they preach and how much we may agree with their motives, we've all still got mouths to feed and the majority of us on a limited budget.

By the time Jamie's stunt riven dinner party reached our screens, I think many of us had had enough of being preached at. Jamie may sneer at mechanically recovered meat but for some people that's all their budgets will run to.

If Channel 4 really wants to have a food fight, let's see Hugh or Jamie feed a family of five for a month on a minimum wage income and see just how they can stick to their principles when there's no money in the kitty and hungry kids at the table.

Bits 'n' Bobs

Honest shows a bit of promise despite Sean Pertwee's performance which wasn't even good enough to be described as wooden. Cardboard would be nearer the mark. Amanda Redman has to carry the piece but she does it so well. British TV drama would be so much poorer without her.

What's the point of Mistresses? Astonishingly weak, they'd have done better to buy in some re-runs of Sex and the City.

Don't bother with the cheap nasty filler Lenny Henry.TV. Chances are you got links to far better clips sitting in your Inbox. Another major plus is that you won't have Lenny talking over them.