Wild West (BBC1) - Linda Green (BBC1): Men Behaving Badly creator Simon Nye was on the radio this week sounding unhappy that someone at the BBC had added canned laughter to his new series Wild West.

I can only applaud their ingenuity in finding somewhere to place the laughs in what's billed as a comedy but is singularly lacking in humour. Perhaps labelling it a comedy in the first place was wrong as Nye seems to be aiming for something that hovers uneasily between The Vicar Of Dibley and The League Of Gentlemen as it features a group of eccentrics living in a remote Cornish village.

Dawn French stars "as you've never, ever, seen her before" according to the Radio Times. The trouble is, we have. She's playing an odd woman with an unusual name, Mary Trewednack and gives us the funny twitches and looks we've seen before in the French and Saunders double act.

She and her bedmate Angela joined the locals' campaign against second homes which, in Mary's case, involved breaking into an actress's cottage to watch her television and eat her chocolates. There was also some nonsense about Tupperware products being washed up on shore and fought over by the locals.

The canned laughter only made the absence of anything remotely funny even more embarrassing. Being preceded in the schedules by Wild West will do nothing to help Linda Green gain ratings worthy of its quality. The first series didn't take off audience-wise as it deserved.

Happily no canned laughter has been forced on Paul Abbot's story of part-time club singer and full-time manhunter Linda Green, played so well by Liza Tarbuck.

She was as sassy and sparky as ever despite accusations from best friend and new mum Michelle (Claire Rushbrook) that she was having an affair with her husband Darren (Daniel Ryan).

Linda's playful groping of Darren's bum ("I've had school mash with less lumps") aroused Michelle's suspicions. Spotting the couple having a secret meeting in the library did nothing to allay them.

There was only one thing for it. Linda cancelled her birthday party. Even an invitation to an Ann Summers-type evening was rejected on the grounds that "12 women off their heads waving dildos" wouldn't cure her depression.

She ordered a takeaway meal. When delivery man Peter Kaye arrived on the doorstep and asked "Pizza-Me?", you couldn't help but laugh. When he learned that Linda hadn't had a birthday without sex since 1987, he couldn't help but get his hopes up - only to have them dashed, like those expecting Wild West to be funny.

The Return of Return to the Forbidden Planet, Theatre Royal, Newcastle

IT'S yet another national tour for this smash-hit feelgood journey on the Intergalactic Starship Albatross. I was wondering how much of a good thing you can have, having seen Forbidden Planet three times already, but I needn't have worried.

As the chap sitting in front of me explained, it just keeps getting better and better, and this was his 15th trip with Captain Tempest and his zany crew. The usual fun and games preceded the performance, with 'passengers' being taken through certain emergency procedures by crew members dispersed throughout the theatre.

The show, with a plot loosely based on Shakespeare's The Tempest, is a great excuse to party with the astonishingly versatile and talented cast. Guitar, drums, woodwind, electronic cello and violin, brass - you name it, they played it. The sight of virginal maiden Miranda giving it rock-all on a raunchy sax was something to see, and Sarah Beaumont still managed to maintain her angelic smile in between blasts.

Every member of this company was terrific, but special mention has to go to Fredrick Ruth as roller-skating robot Ariel because of the sheer physical difficulty of the role. Carrying a hefty wench up steps on skates can't be easy, but Fredrick not only achieved that, but sang, danced, played drums like a maniac and had the audience in the palm of his hand.

The audience yelled for more, and got it. Everyone left the theatre with a big smile, and one happy punter was heard to say: "That was amazing!"

Sue Heath

Until Saturday. Box Office 0870-9055060