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

Love Soup

BBC1, Saturdays

It seems like ages since the first series of Love Soup was shown. It’s actually far longer because I didn’t watch it until I rented the DVDs some months later. The hiatus gave the impression than this was a good series which was going to fade into the ether – denied, like Alan "Smell my Cheese" Partridge, a second series. So when the murmurings of that second series started I was delighted. There would be format changes – the male lead wasn’t coming back and rather than recast him they decided to drop the "they are perfect for each other but will never meet" angle and concentrate on Tamsin Greig’s character instead. This seemed like a good idea – as was the move to the more traditional half hour slot – but based on the evidence of the first episode it wasn’t.

There are certain hallmarks of a David Renwick script. There are the fantastically clever contrivances, the mind blowingly skilful farces, the wonderful misunderstandings, the brilliant twists and the sparkling dialogue. One Foot in the Grave, Jonathan Creek and the first series of Love Soup all achieved these on a weekly basis. A throw away joke in a Renwick script typically contained more imagination, intelligence and wit than most series of mainstream sit coms.

So what the heck went wrong?

Not since the scrape-up-the-discarded-ideas final series of One Foot in the Grave (which really did feel like Renwick going through his bin and cobbling together three hours worth of material he didn’t think was good enough first time round and which proved him absolutely right) has he let us down so badly. It was half an hour of David Renwick style set ups with distinctly sub-David Renwick style payoffs. It was as if he wrote the first half and gave it to Fred "My Family" Baron to finish off.

Let’s look at some of the ideas he presented in the first half of the play and why they were (with one exception) massive let downs.

Sheridan Smith's character finds her boyfriend’s diary on his computer. Their passions have been running over of late and she believed they were at the peak of their form. Instead, she finds diary entries which suggest she’s a disappointment. These entries were written rather oddly and the expectation is that – ho ho ho – they are about something else. But what? We turn it over in our minds and expect he’s breeding fish or restoring old cars and that’s what he talking about. Basically, anything other than their bedroom fun (or lack thereof). After much fevered speculation and feminine wiles we find out that the diary is actually… about their bedroom antics. Not impressed.

The dizzy brunette with the pretentious name is in a bit of a pickle because she’s fallen in love with a shadow. Every night she looks out of her window and sees the silhouette of a man smoking in his garden. She never sees the man himself – just his enormous shadow on the side of a parked van. She’s trying to pluck up the courage to go and speak to him. What could this be? Is it her neighbour’s child playing with a torch? Is it them projecting a movie on their Venetian blind? Is it something far more devious than that? No – it’s a bloke whose shadow falls on the side of a van. The pay off is that – jus as she’s about to go and see him – the shadows of his wife and child join him and a perfect family group is silhouetted on the van. Not impressed.

Tamsin’s character is approached by her boss and taken out for dinner. But lo – rumour has it that the boss is one of those lesbians. Which means obviously she’ll be trying to get Tamsin into bed. This makes Tamsin nervous and she spends the entire dinner mumbling and blushing. She is then invited up to the lesbo's bedroom which can mean only one thing. She’s offered a better job. Oh no – a better job which will involve sleeping with her dykey boss. Oh lordy – the rug muncher has crossed her legs. Oh golly this is awkward. Then she says bye bye and Tamsin is free to leave. Absolutely nothing untoward happens but – comically – Tamsin doesn’t get the job because her boss isn’t a lesbian but thinks from Tamsin’s nervous glances that Tamsin IS a lesbian and she doesn’t want a lesbian assistant because that would be terrible. Not impressed.

Tamsin is also learning to drive. Her instructor has a crush on a fellow instructor. Tamsin gives him some advice. He gets his lady into bed and phones Tamsin. She gives him some advice – reluctantly – which we don’t hear because its rude. She concludes by telling him to be "gentle". The next day the lady driving instructor cannot walk properly. It turns out he thought she said be "mental" and left her in a lot of comedy pain. Like the viewer but without the comedy. Not impressed.

The only clever bit of the episode was on Tamsin’s latest driving lesson. She pulls up outside a newsagent so her instructor can get a convenient paper (it might’ve been a pie shop and a convenient pie – I forget the details) only to get caught up in a robbery. The robber runs out and tells her to drive, encouraging her with a knife waved in her general direction. He criticised her driving throughout and told her what she should be doing. The stress of the situation made the whole driving thing click into place and she passed her test at the next attempt. As someone who passed at the fifth attempt and took an embarrassing five years for it all to click into place I can sympathise with her utterly. This was a much more amusing and worthwhile way for her to pass her driving test than just working hard or being lucky. Finally I was impressed.

So Love Soup series two is looking like a 'be careful what you wish for' thing. The acting is fine but the show lives and dies by the brilliance of David Renwick. If he is content to put out decent set ups with lousy payoffs then there is no point watching it. I’ll probably give it another week or two and hope that this was a one-off. Otherwise I’ll keep series one in my good books and pretend series two never happened.

Not impressed.