Jamie Hall and Ben Farrell review the latest TV shows.

Jamie Hall is group head of production at Lime Pictures.

The format for Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle is Lee performing stand-up material in front of an audience interspersed with sketches. It has a great set that looks like a cross between the Press Club and a Soho jazz bar.

The prime targets for the satire were Dan Brown, Chris Moyles and Jeremy Clarkson, a rich vein to mine then, but sadly it just didn’t make me laugh. And in this industry at the moment, we really need a laugh more than ever. As we all know, taste in comedy is a very personal thing, but sadly Stewart is not for me, this time.

I loved the Alexander McCall The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency series of books and with the TV show having the combined talent of the greatly missed Anthony Minghella, Richard Curtis, the Weinstein Company and director Charles Sturridge, this should have been television gold. It was slow; the characters were at times clichéd; and it projected a view of Africa that I didn’t recognise. However, it was great entertainment and was perfect Sunday night viewing, I look forward to more soon.

As a fan of Skins I was really looking forward to the third series and how the transition to a new cast would be managed.

The new actors had big shoes to fill. Sadly, I was disappointed with the beginning of the series. The wit and humour had been lost and I felt it was trying to shock rather than entertain, I fell out of love with it. However, after viewing this episode I am pleased to say the love affair is back on. A cracking story of teen bisexuality, twin rivalry and GBH produced a vibrant, witty and emotionally charged episode that gripped me and will have me coming back for more.

Kathryn and Megan Prescott and Lily Loveless delivered performances of great maturity and emotional intensity, surely stars of the future. But Skins always leaves me thinking, why the hell were my teenage years so boring?

Ben Farrell is head of comedy at Objective.
Comedy on television is a threatened genre. So it’s in the best interests of comedy producers that every new show, regardless of production company or channel, is brilliant.
On paper, Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle should have been excellent. Lee, the hero of latter-day stand-up, performed new material alongside illustrative sketches, featuring comedy god Kevin Eldon, with script advice from Armando Iannucci and Chris Morris.

Unfortunately, apart from the title sequence, the Vehicle was not good. The stand-up sections didn’t work as well as they should, mainly because of choppy editing and some strange shot decisions, concentrating on a lamp or Lee’s hand, or the top of his head – never the best way to translate stand-up on to screen.

As a low-energy performer Lee wasn’t best served by being placed in a dark working men’s club. It brought the whole show down.

And the script, from stand-up to sketch, needed subbing down. It felt baggy, like a show that had been filmed before the running order had been decided.

To be fair, it would have had a fraction of the resources of international co-pro The Number
One Ladies’ Detective Agency, which is a well-crafted and faithful adaptation of the popular series
of books. As a drama, it wasn’t my cup of tea – I didn’t enjoy the books and so wasn’t likely to enjoy the TV show. This was very gentle family fare in the tradition of Doc Martin, or Miss Marple, the only difference being that this featured an entirely black cast in an African setting.

I’m jealous of Skins. It’s not just that the storylines make me feel that I went to all the wrong parties when I was a teenager, but it’s also the sharp scripts from the likes of the Dawson Brothers and Robin Ince. And whereas most of us just pay lip service to the term “360 commissioning” (second only to “edgy” in the broadcasting dictionary), Skins has created a unified cross platform show that works.