The Crouches (BBC1): MUCH has been made that this is the first all-black family sit-com produced by the BBC although, intriguingly, it's written by a Scotsman, Rab C Nesbitt creator Ian Pattison.

Those with long memories will recall that ITV has already been there with The Fosters, featuring a young Lenny Henry, in the mid-1970s.

Watching The Crouches, mysteriously banished to a late 10.35pm slot because it's a weeny bit rude, you realise that colour has nothing to do with it. A family is a family, and this script would work the same whether the participants were red, blue or sky-blue pink.

The important thing with a comedy is whether it makes you laugh. The studio audience certainly sounded happy. Was the laughter real or did the producers get it out of a can, I wonder? They roared at the silliest jokes, gasped whenever a character did anything mildly out-of-the-ordinary and generally sounded as if they'd swallowed vast quantities of happy pills.

The whole thing has the feel of an American comedy series, a sort of Cosby/Fresh Prince Of Bel Air with London accents. There's no shortage of comic possibilities with a father, mother, teenage children, grandparents and a dodgy local businessman as the regular characters. So it was disappointing to find the opener revolved around the one about the son who wants a pair of expensive trainers, not some market stall rip-off.

Son Aiden resented having to wear Nuboks rather than the Reeboks he wanted. Never mind the product placement, this provided the opportunity for someone to say, "I don't give a bok". I did like the idea of a Tommy Hilfiger rip-off being labelled Benny Hilfinger.

Grandpa (Rudolph Walker, on leave from EastEnders) and grandma (Mona Hammond) provide many of the laughs. "These days it's all I can do to find my teeth, let alone lie through them," said grandma. And when father Roly put on a balaclava, his wife told him, "Take it off, you look like you've got your head stuck in a condom". To which he replied: "It won't be the first time".

Away from home, Don Warrington has a lot of fun as Bailey, Roly's London Underground boss who claims proudly that he's a fully-trained radio announcer. He also provided the most surreal line of the whole half-hour: "When I was your age, I was reading the shipping forecast naked with a Filipino hermaphrodite on my knee".

Published: 10/09/2003