If television is the idiot's lantern then the subjective opinions of someone unqualified to write about it must surely be the idiot's lectern.

After You’ve Gone

Friday 8.30 BBC1

I don’t know what Friday nights did to deserve "After You’ve Gone" but they better not do it again. It’s now in its second season and has already notched up more episodes than "Fawlty Towers". Well done BBC. "After You’ve Gone" is from the same stable as "My Family" – that sickly transatlantic hybrid which was occasionally funny when the wacky son was in it but which continued long after his departure. "My Family’s" success came from a pair of decent leading actors and the public’s apparent willingness to enjoy hearing a father shout about how much he hates his children.

"After You’ve Gone" takes the "My Family" template and reuses it quite shamelessly. You’ve got the wacky son – who looks like a younger version of someone else but I don’t know who – and his kerazy antics. The daughter is a typical teenage girl with no obvious comic potential, played by an actress who has either been in Eastenders/Hollyoaks and sees this as a step up the career ladder or who wants to be in Eastenders/Hollyoaks and see this as a stepping stone up the career ladder. I literally don’t care enough to find out which. The less said about the idiot sidekick/colleague the better. He clearly got his only acting lesson out of a Christmas cracker and his sole productive feature is that he won’t be doing what so many wacky sidekicks/colleagues do and overshadowing the star.

The star of "After You’ve Gone" is Nicholas Lyndhurst and I have issues with Nicholas Lyndhurst. The big problem with him is that he was part of "Only Fools and Horses" and that became the biggest sit com hit in the BBCs history. The stars of "Only Fools" kept getting huge money thrown at them to make new "Only Fools and Horses" and so it passed into lore that Nicholas Lyndhurst was a big money guy who, since he was getting star money, should be the star. Nicholas Lyndhurst is not a leading man. He is not a star. He is not someone who should be given the job of carrying a show. At best he is someone who can react to stronger performers. The partnership with David Jason worked for several reasons – they had excellent scripts from a writer head and shoulders above anyone writing for After You’ve Gone, the physical contrast between the brothers was funny all by itself, David Jason is such a good actor that he makes everyone around him look good and everything was done to play to Lyndhurst’s strengths and hide his weaknesses.

He almost got away with "Goodnight Sweetheart" because the time travel gimmick was so strong. It became tedious after a while and I think I gave up on the series just before (perhaps just after) two thirds of the cast. But the gimmick was a good enough device that Lyndhurst was forever reacting to it. The twists and turns it provided gave him plenty of opportunities to do his range of "surprised" faces. Without a strong leading man or a strong story premise, he flounders. It isn’t that he’s bad, he’s just not very good. He brings no energy to the role – a role that is depressingly flat anyway – and you get the feeling that if his character wasn’t actually in the show it wouldn’t make any difference. If Jimmy was like the Prime Minister in Yes Minister – an unseen protagonist – the show would go on exactly as planned. Lyndhurst could probably do the whole series over the telephone.

There are some good actors in the series. Celia Imrie is never less than a delight in anything she does. It is a little disconcerting that someone I used to have a crush on is now playing grandmother roles but putting that aside, she is always good value. Amanda Abbington is utterly wasted in her role of sort-of girlfriend. While I’m pleased to see someone I fancy on TV, it would be better if it was in anything else. She’s a good actress – she was superb when she appeared in a semi-serious role in an episode of Teachers – but given average comic fair she will give you a brief range of comedy faces and sleepwalk through the rest. I can’t blame her – if you have a dreadful part in a dreadful series you take the money and hope something better will come along as a result of it.

Most sit coms aren’t funny and that has always been the case. We can look at the classics from the past and conclude that today is rubbish and that yesterday was brilliant but it isn’t true. "After You’ve Gone" is one of the 90% of sit coms which no one ever remembers existed. Of the other 10% half will be regarded as classics and half will be remembered as flops. It is a way to fill half an hour before the good programmes start. Maybe it helps fill some kind of quota. The reasons I find it so appalling are that it is a sign that the BBC believes the "My Family" model of sit com writing and producing is the way forward and that two talented actresses are being dragged down by this rubbish. If this is the future of situation comedy then situation comedy has no future. It desperately needs a new John Sullivan to come along and save us from committee scripts and a new David Jason to save us from Nicholas Lyndhurst as a leading man.