TV review: And the audience laughed their socks off

Tinky-Winky has been outed again. About 18 months ago, there were suggestions that the largest Teletubby swung his handbag both ways. Now, the right-wing American evangelist Jerry Falwell has pointed the finger even more directly, citing as evidence Tinky-Winky's purpleness and triangular antenna. The official colour of Gay Pride is purple and its symbol is a triangle, thunders Reverend Falwell. Moreover, boys do not carry handbags. But a spokesman for Itsy Bitsy Entertainment Co, which markets Teletubbies in the US, has responded indignantly. It is not a handbag but Tinky-Winky's magic bag, he says. Never mind abortion or Bill Clinton. Handbag or magic bag, that's what I call a debate.

The Teletubbies have taken the US by storm, but if the Rev Falwell's warnings are heeded and Tinky-Winky is deemed a subversive presence, those severe questions on the back of the US immigration form will have to be amended. They could hardly make more hilarious reading than they do at present, so I don't see why there shouldn't be a further question along the lines of "Are you now, or have you ever been, inclined to mince around with La-La, Dipsy and Po?" As for the matter of Tinky-Winky's true sexuality, the speculation can only grow, and by the time they are in their 30s, today's toddlers will be convinced that the Teletubbies, like wartime spies, transmitted secret jokes to adults.

Nothing is new in television. For my generation, a legend has grown up around Captain Pugwash. Even now I meet 35-year-olds at parties who swear blind that Captain Pugwash's shipmates included Seaman Staines, Master Bates and Roger the Cabin Boy. No matter that the series has been updated and is now showing on ITV, with absolutely no sign of the good ship Innuendo. The smut theorists simply argue that you can't get away with such naughtiness nowadays, so Master Bates and co must have been pensioned off.

In the meantime, television's obsession with the Seventies continues apace, for the simple reason that of the current bunch of commissioning editors, most entered their teens just behind David Cassidy, can hum the theme tune of The Persuaders, and know that Olga Korbut is not, nor ever was, married to Ronnie.

The latest genuflection to the Seventies comes in the form of an ITV sitcom (that well-known oxymoron) called Days Like These. Episode one was predictably awful but, needless to say, the studio audience thought it was hilarious and exploded with laughter at every reference to Ford Zephyrs and Cockney Rebel. I have long wondered, incidentally, where sitcom audiences come from. And I am now nearly certain that they are bussed to London every Friday from a small village, probably somewhere in the East Midlands. It is a place where the sub-postmaster has only to say "next please" for his customers to crease up, and be carried out gasping for oxygen and dry underwear.

If only there were more studio-bound sitcoms self-assured enough to do without audience laughter. Mrs Merton and Malcolm, which begins next week, does without, but that is largely because Caroline Aherne previously persuaded executives - after quite a bit of yelling and hair-pulling - not to plonk a live audience in front of her sublime comedy The Royle Family. She was proved dead right. Gales of audience laughter would have intruded terribly in the low-key bickering of the Royles (although I am intrigued to learn that there are now plans afoot to give The Royle Family the ultimate live audience, by mounting it as a play in the West End).

Aherne is already powerful enough to get her own way, and if Mrs Merton and Malcolm is a hit she will be able to make Alan Yentob dance the fandango for her on Shepherd's Bush Green, naked but for a rose between his buttocks. Indeed, he will probably be happy to.

But audience laughter will live on. Many producers believe that it lifts performers and sharpens their timing. And it's true that it becomes really objectionable only when there is nothing very funny going on, although that sadly seems to be the case in eight sitcoms out of 10.

In The League of Gentlemen, however, I barely notice it. Like The Royle Family, this is a very funny, very original, and very sharply observed comedy, and like the Royles it plays on BBC2. This is significant. As I have said before and will very probably say again, there currently seems to be more innovation on BBC2 than on the four other terrestrial channels put together.

The League of Gentlemen deals in macabre humour teetering on sick. It is set in the northern town of Royston Vasey, completely fictional although a friend of mine says that its inhabitants remind him slightly of the townsfolk of Sedbergh, and if I were them I would sue. The main characters - all written and played by the formidably talented trio of Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith - are creations of genius. Think of The Fast Show crossed with The Exorcist.

Last week's cave guide - who pointed out limestone formations named "The Wombles ... you'll see how the sediment forms the brim of Orinoco's hat ... the Specimen Jar, the Toffee Apple, and Errol Flynn" - was completely inspired, especially to those of us with dim memories of O-level field trips to see stalagmites and stalactites. On which subject, I went to a boys' school, which is doubtless why our geography teacher, the estimable Mr Clowes, felt it safe to offer the pointer that "mites go up and tites come down". Political correctness be damned, I've always known a stalagmite from a stalactite.

Anyway, another notable character in The League of Gentlemen is a man who habitually offends the disabled, and perhaps unfairly, he puts me in mind of a certain G Hoddle. Mind you, getting sacked for non-footballing reasons, and thereby retaining some credibility as a coach, may turn out to be Hoddle's smartest ever career move. England v France established that England are not really very good. But Sky Sports 2 at least lifted the gloom with one moment of unintentional levity. For as Zidane found Anelka with a laser-beam pass, up flashed a trailer for the channel's next big live football event, Rochdale v Hull City.

Apart from that, there wasn't much to smile at. Particularly for the caretaker manager, Howard Wilkinson, who is famously po-faced. Still, it could be worse. He could look like Tinky-Winky.