COMEDY PLAYHOUSE: TIM VINE TRAVELS THROUGH TIME, BBC1, 10.35pm
PEOPLE talk about comedy being “painful” but I didn’t appreciate what they meant until now. My God, this is agony. It’s so daft it must surely be aimed at children, so why is it on at this late hour?
Tim Vine plays the zany owner of Tim’s Antiques where he has an old clock with the power to send him back in time to 1205.
This feels like Mrs Brown’s Boys being filmed in front of a screaming audience with Tim Vine making jokes and then smirking at the camera, and inviting a celeb guest in through the door. (“There was a lot hinging on that!”)
When he moves back in time he says, “I hope I see my friend Lance. I don’t see Lance a lot.” Then he’s back in Robin Hood’s neck of the woods and flirting with Maid Marian.
It’s a comedy pilot, so take comfort in it perhaps being just a one-off. It’s manic and jumpy and feels like a pantomime, but is jammed full of silly puns instead of dames and fairies.
AUTOPSY, C5, 10pm
AS an antidote to the daft comedy on BBC1, let’s take a look at the death of a famous person. Such a grim topic should set our mood straight again, and act as an Alka-Seltzer to Tim Vine’s burbling comedic indigestion.
The last episode in the series looks at the early death of the wonderful Judy Garland. Only 47 when she died, her physical and mental health had been wrecked by long-term drug use. A glimpse at photos of her in her final years are shocking; she looks like a tiny withered bird.
The young Judy had been introduced to pills at an early age when her Hollywood studio would think nothing of giving their young stars a little something to pep them up. This then necessitated another little something to calm them down – and so the terrible cycle began.
This show examines her final years and her medical records to tell us more about this great star’s early death.
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