BBC Four might not be the most flush place, but in each of the Curse of Comedy season dramas so far – Steptoe, Hancock, Hughie Green – the thoroughly flush entertainers seem to be living in drudgery. It may well have been Britain in the 1950s and 1960s (a time of – horrors! – no Ikea or Skandium) but surely, being well-off, these celebrities lived in slightly more extravagant surroundings than the dingy semis that keep cropping up in these dramas.

Other flaws in Frankie Howerd: Rather You Than Me were more glaring. David Walliams never really picked up Howerd’s character by the scruff of its neck, neither mimicking it well nor creating something distinctive. The tics weren’t quite outrageous enough, the swoop of those “Ooooh” and “ahhhs” not full-bodied, the lip pursing and rolling eyes were in abeyance. It was also hard to follow and decipher: the drama was apparently set in a fallow period of Howerd’s career after (presumably) success, but this wasn’t made clear. He just seemed a bit hopeless and pathetic, and then Peter Cook jumped in right at the end to save his career.

The suggested root of Howerd’s misery and self-loathing was his homosexuality, which he seemed utterly ashamed of; and the drama sought to illuminate that alongside his relationship with his longtime partner Dennis Heymer. Rafe Spall played Heymer beautifully: puppy-dog devotion and iron belief mixed with frustration and anger at how Howerd kowtowed to his demons.

But their drama didn’t go anywhere. It was still, listless. A performance Howerd gave at the Oxford Union in 1990 book-ended events. But Walliams didn’t set the stage alight there, the jokes weren’t very good, the innuendo fizzed as flat as month-old Coke. The same at the restaurant table where Howerd first bewitched Dennis, then a waiter, in the 1950s: the expressions of the diners were mesmerised but at what? Howerd just seemed a mumbling fool.

The writing was more confident when tracking the tricky terrain of the men’s relationship: Howerd hated his body (and called his penis, “parsnip”). The sex he had with Heymer was “dirty”. All his partner could say was “I love you”, but Howerd’s terror at being outed in the press overrode any endearments: “You’ll have to make yourself scarce in the morning.”

Howerd revealed his father had abused him, but this didn’t explain away all his demons or give the drama much added weight. The best scene was a rare moment of happiness and it wasn’t his, but Heymer’s as he finally had guilt-free sex with another man. Howerd went to a doctor who gave him LSD. It emerged (I think, but the drama was unclear about this and much else) that this was some kind of aversion therapy.

Howerd and Heymer’s relationship remained something of a pantomime to the end, Heymer still playing the chauffeur/agent/dogsbody in public. We didn’t know about the Howerd before the painful period, or the Howerd after, although at the end he seemed more relaxed, clasping his lover’s hand with affection. But it was all as insubstantial and threadbare as the furniture: the real Frankie Howerd escaped detection with nothing more than an arch “Oooh missus”.

A breakneck, very funny script by Joey Murphy and John Pardee saw Desperate Housewives (Channel 4) shake the evening to some kind of attention. At the convent Bree’s daughter told her that all the “eating disorder girls get the best exercise equipment”. Bree, who is faking carrying her daughter’s child to spare the family’s shame (somewhat unnecessary on Wisteria Lane), desperately tried to keep her “pregnancy” a secret.

A seething game of charades took place, with the new evil neighbour Catherine (“Robomum”) silencing the gossips by inferring her daughter had been abused by her exhusband. She later blithely revealed to her husband that had been a lie. Edie decided it was time to announce her engagement by showing off her rock, and square Lynette ate some marijuana brownies (baked by her mother, who was fed up of seeing her in so much pain after chemo). From being the “ninja” of charades Lynette became its most stoned competitor, miming Hang ’Em High by pointing at Edie and acting out her suicide attempt. After a turgid spell, there’s a renewed spikiness on Wisteria Lane.

Out of the box

— There’s a landmark moment on Channel 4 tonight – it’s the final episode of The Sopranos, regularly labelled the greatest drama ever made. So why no publicity fanfare before its first showing on terrestrial television, and why the graveyard slot? Perhaps the channel believes that everyone has seen it, either on E4 last October or on DVD. But is there any terrestrial viewer out there who has been waiting for this moment for nine years, patiently avoiding the barrage of press spoilers over the past ten months? Was it worth the aggravation?

— Somebody get Kate Garraway a fan: the GMTV presenter purred, pouted and giggled through her interview with George Clooney yesterday. And can we put an end to interviewers opting for that now-familiar cop-out question: “How do you feel about your privacy being invaded?” Just ask them the damn questions and stop trying to be their mates.

tim.teeman@thetimes.co.uk

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