Little Britain (BBC2): IF YOU don't like this latest radio-to-TV transfer, narrator Tom Baker suggests an easy way to make your feelings known.

Look at the names in the production team scrolled on the screen at the end, he says, and if you haven't liked the programme "you might enjoy making a note and making obscene phone calls to them".

He actually receives such a call on air in the dying moments of the programme. "No, I'm not wearing knickers," he insists to the caller.

Little Britain is a sort of lighter The League Of Gentleman but no less observant about life's little quirks. Writers-performers Matt Lucas, alias George Dawes of Shooting Stars, and David Walliams have created a wonderful gallery of eccentrics, oddballs and grotesques.

The series began on Radio 4, has already been seen on BBC3 and can expect to attract a whole new - and much bigger - audience through its BBC2 screening.

It is totally ridiculous, but tremendously funny in a very silly way. As the weeks pass, everyone will develop their own favourite characters.

It might be young Jason, who's in love with his best friend's grandmother ("Where do you hang out?" he asks. "The day centre," she replies). Or the lad in red PVC who declares proudly in the pub of a Welsh mining village, "I'm the only gay in this village" and sees off potential fellow gays with a scornful, "You're probably just a little poofy".

Stage hypnotist Kenny Craig certainly has a way with women - he hypnotises them into ordering the cheapest things on the menu when on a date.

Why didn't I have a teacher like the one who makes the class read Dickens' Great Expectations out loud in Scottish accents, and then in the style of The Elephant Man, before asking: "Shall we just watch the video?".

How unlike our own dear Prime Minister is the one played by Anthony Head, whose aide Sebastian has a crush on him. And what person doesn't know a transvestite like Emily Howard who presses flowers and strokes kittens in her spare time.

I want to visit the community centre where people from all walks of life are free to meet. Cue several men in Nazi uniform leaving the building where even gluttons are free to attend diet classes until the law is passed to imprison them.

Already I love Baker's commentary, not least his description of Britain as the "land of technological achievement - we've had underground water for ten years, an underground tunnel that links us to Peru, and we invented the cat".

He's always ready with helpful hints, telling us that "if you have a verucca and would like to share it with others, pop down to your local swimming pool".

Published: 02/12/2003