COMEDY PLAYHOUSE: STOP/START
Jack Docherty wrote this latest instalment of the Comedy Playhouse and he also stars, alongside Nigel Havers, Kerry Godliman and John Thomson.
The story is about three marriages and the various jealousies, insecurities and temptations the couples endure. It’s delivered rather like a play with the actors breaking off from their dialogue to speak directly to the audience – or, in this case, the camera.
Docherty plays Rob, a middle-aged man who’s preparing an anniversary party with his wife. He ponders how dull married life has become and how his wife has stumpy legs like “little thumbs”. Life is as exciting as “eating gravel and talking to puffins” on the Outer Hebrides. Then he realises his new neighbour is a young and gorgeous woman he used to work with and so he invites her to their party. His wife isn’t impressed, telling her friend this new neighbour looks like “something that’d come up if you googled “massive threat in skimpy pants.””
Nigel Havers plays the “massive threat’s” nervous husband, constantly worried she’s going to leave him for someone younger.
DANGERMAN: THE INCREDIBLE MR GOODWIN, DAVE, 9pm
This new series feels like good old-fashioned Saturday night entertainment. The only thing that’s wrong is that it’s broadcast on Friday nights. I can’t help thinking it belongs to a Saturday night schedule in the 1980s, sandwiched between Allo Allo and The Generation Game.
Jonathan Goodwin is an escapologist, knife thrower and all-round “dangerman” and his website tells us he’s been “attacked by sharks, burned at the stake, buried alive, bitten by rattlesnakes….” and so the painful list goes on.
This new show honours his hero, Harry Houdini, and Goodwin gets himself into horrible situations but always bounces free at the last minute.
Tonight’s stunts involve inhaling needles, putting his hand into a bear trap and doing some free-climbing up a tower block.
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