Iconic ITV hits 70, its best years long gone

DO YOU ever feel that TV bosses just want to terrify us?

- GARRY BUSHELL

CLASS: Frances De La Tour, Leonard Rossiter, Don Warrington in Rising Damp

When they're not unsettling viewers with documentaries about killer pandemics, they're scouring the world for disasters. You half expect Senna the Soothsayer from Up Pompeii to turn up on BBC1's Six O'Clock News wailing "skies will grow dark, the wind will howl, fire and brimstone will rain down upon the city, and all will famish in the flames..."

In desperation I turned to BBC3's returning sitcom Juice. It opened with Jamma, a 30-something gay manchild and jobbing clown, piddling in a wine glass before a man pleasured himself over him.

Hip modern comedy, you see. It's not remotely funny, the jokes are weaker than a cup of decaf tea, and bizarrely it seems more boob obsessed than Jack from On The Buses, but it does pack in "strong language and sexual scenes". Hurrah!

True, Mawaan Rizwan has manic cartoon energy, but wouldn't you rather watch repeats of It Ain't Half Hot Mum? Oh, but of course we can't. That's banned for crimes against fashionable thinking.

Most comedies we grew up loving, from Tommy Cooper to Dad's Army, now come with the stern warning: "This programme reflects the attitudes of its time."

How could it not?

What era's attitudes would you expect Stan Butler or Jim Royle to reflect? 13th century Mongolia? 23rd century Mars colonialists? It's farcical.