Television: Today's pick

Thursday 12 March 1998 19:02 EST
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Father Ted (9.30pm C4) Does Father Ted deserve its position in the sitcom pantheon? That might seem a tasteless question to ask in the aftermath of Dermot Morgan's untimely death - but the first episode in the third and last series stirs only intermittent giggles. It's a long way from the belly laughs of happy astonishment that greeted the fresh and unexpected first series - carefree silliness at a time when sitcom writers all seemed to be trying to laboriously ape either Fawlty Towers or Cheers. But maybe it's a one-trick pony. Once you expect silliness, then it produces diminishing returns - as with late period Monty Python. Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews were quite right to want to kill their creation at the top, but it seems even they might have gone the traditional series too far. Still, like I said, there are periodic delights, as this week Ted manages to insult Craggy Island's Chinese community.

Timewatch: Love Story (7.10pm BBC2) A welcome repeat of Catrine Clasy's fascinating documentary (which would make a wonderful movie script, by the way) recalling the tragic wartime lesbian love affair between a Nazi hausfrau and a sophisticated 21-year-old Jewish woman in the Berlin of 1942.

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