TV reviews: Burnistoun | Downton Abbey | Love And Marriage: A 20th Century Romance

Burnistoun

BBC2, Monday, 10pm

Downton Abbey

STV, Sunday, 9pm

Love And Marriage: A 20th Century Romance

BBC4, Tuesday, 9pm

The Stanley Baxter Show is serene at No 2 and Rab C Nesbitt and The High Life seem safe enough, but suddenly The Five Thirty Show and The Hour look vulnerable.

How can this be? Not actual comedies, these couthie shortbreid slices of pre-news piffle were unintentionally hilarious. In truth, though, I only included them to get the list up to a Top Ten. Now, better late than never, I have Burnistoun.

I can’t believe I’m the last person to be turned on to its pawky, plooky wit, to move around the workplace shouting “For real!”, to instruct the kids that when you find yourself dissatisfied with your surroundings, the only reasonable response is “Up the road!” It didn’t grab me at the start and I gave up – too soon, because new sketch shows often seem more miss than hit until they get under your skin, and in its third season Burnistoun has got under mine like scabies. Third and last, alas. The “Save Burnistoun” campaign – which I’m prepared to downgrade to the “Gie’s a Christmas special at least” initiative in exchange for a month’s supply of macaroon bars because, yes, I can be bought – starts here.

My criteria for a winning comedy are: a) Does it make me laugh? b) Are there good-looking burds in it? c) Does it allow me to come over all pretentious about sub-text, deeper meaning and Scottish identity? The answers are yes, yes and yes. Burnistoun seems to be saying that Scotland, formerly a land of inventors, may be stuck in the hoose these days but it continues to embrace the new. Who is Jolly Boy John, home-broadcasting on his laptop in Speedos to techno, if not the son of Jolly Boy John Logie Baird? As Scott, shell-suited mate of the equally sports-casual Peter, puts it: “Even yer maw’s life-streamin’ noo.”

Not all change is good. The “Up the road!” boys loathe trendy ambience when they’re out for a drink or a meal. Hairy McClowdry, host of Kiltie Time, incorporates Kanye West and Ryan Gosling into his heedrum-hodrum rhymes but that’s deemed acceptable, whereas it’s not okay for history presenters to stride around moors, all lustrous of barnet (Neil Oliver, I think they mean you). If there’s schizophrenia at work on Burnistoun, well, isn’t that the national condition? One thing we can all agree on, I’m sure, is that it’s plain wrong for local talent to swan off to Hollywood and come back talking about how great it is to be “Skaddish” (Lulu, Sheena Easton and Gerard Butler, stop it now). If the show’s creators, Iain Connell and Robert Florence, ever get to Hollywood – and I’d love to see Burnistoun: The Movie – it’s a pretty safe bet they won’t make the same mistake.

Last week, the “Up the road!” conspiracy theorists were irked to find themselves dining in “a snobby joint full of snobby people who look doon on the likes of us”. Shame they weren’t round the table at Downton Abbey for the start of the third series, reaching 1920. Sybil has come back with husband Tom for sister Mary’s wedding. The “grubby little chauffeur chap” he was dubbed, then one of the other nobs decided it would be a spiffing idea to drug him. I tell you, we’re never going to get rid of the class divide with behaviour like that, though Shirley MacLaine is doing her darnedest.

Shirl plays Martha, Cora’s mum, who’s pitched up from the US complete with Dorothy Parker-style waspishness. She’ll say: “Revolutions erupt, monarchies crash and nothing changes for you people.” The Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith) will say: “But you people don’t understand the importance of tradition.” And, declining the quince jam, Martha will come back: “Yes we do, we just don’t give it power over us.”

The scenes between MacLaine and Smith, countesses of the screen both, were much the best things about Downton’s return but I’m afraid I still can’t love this big, silly, soapy, surprisingly clunky manners fest.

There was a Big Kiss in Downton, between Mary and Matthew the night before their wedding, and it was the clunkiest thing of all. He almost missed her lips, though in his defence his eyes were shut (tradition, you see). But contrast that with the chasteness and longing of the stories in Love And Marriage: A 20th Century Romance. In times of hardship and war, a kiss was never just a kiss, and this was best summed up by the old boy recalling how he proposed: “Darling, I’ve got 25 quid – will you marry me?” «