A Comedy On This Day: Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive - 1990 (1 August 2006)

 The fictional panel show-within-a-show would be a particularly dismal watch this week, with guest stars Jo Brand, Paul Foot, Ronni Ancona (who refuses to do impressions) and - especially unimpressive - Heat magazine's Boyd Hilton. The last of these is a particularly grizzly period touch, reminding the present-day viewer of how prominent that publication was for a few years in the noughties, before the Internet swept it away.

 Annually Retentive has an unusual structure. You assume that there are two simultaneous timelines (the panel show and the backstage preparations), but it's actually less linear than that. About half a dozen different stages of the production are shown in intercut scenes (Rob and the booker, Rob and the producer, the team meeting, the dressing room, etc.), with the viewer not told which order they occur in (you can work it out, but it is quite hard work).

 As a lot of the comedy comes from the Brydon character talking about other comedians behind their back and then having to deal with them in performance, the effect of this editing making the programme seem more interested in demonstrating a thesis about media representation of celebrity than it is in telling a story. You can see why it didn't much appeal to a wide audience.

 This episode has some of the series' most scathingly specific takedowns (and best moments), when a fed-up Brydon performs lengthy impersonations of Johnny Vaughan and Ross ("I appeal to students") Noble.

A Comedy On This Day: Annually Retentive - 1981 (25 July 2006)

 Annually Retentive's celebrity guests received uneven amounts of attention and ribbing. This week, Josie d'Arby and Robert Webb are given little to do, while Russell Brand gets the lion's share of comic business. The programme catches him at just the right time, during the first few months of his period of immense fame when he was still a novelty rather than a ubiquitous presence. Although I've always found his talents as a comedian and actor erratic, one thing that he is very good at is playing a slightly caricatured version of himself, flirting with Sharon Horgan's character by asking her if she's ovulating.

 Another merit of this programme occurs when one of the guests is a comic who you can't abide. I've never liked Marcus Brigstocke, finding him unbearably belligerent and shouty, so it's good to see the Brydon character skewering him in programme planning:

BRYDON: (dismissively) Oh, let's get Marcus on. He'll probably come on dressed very conservatively and then say something a little bit risqué. That's what he does, okay? Looks like a geography teacher, says something risqué. It's a one-note joke.

A Comedy On This Day: Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive - 1997 (11 July 2006)

 This sharp and specific media satire is beginning to require historical footnotes. This especially struck me when Sharon Horgan's P.A. tries to justify booking Richard Bacon for the show to Brydon - "He's actually better known now for insulting those fat people on Top Of The Pops" I wonder what a fifteen year-old comedy fan of today - who likes The Trip say, and wants to investigate more of Rob Brydon's work - would make of this programme?

 The other three guests on the first edition of the terrible panel show are Lucy Porter, Gail Porter and David Mitchell. All come with baggage and stipulations:

BRYDON: So we've got a bald woman who doesn't want people to mention that she's bald, we've got an unknown woman who would like us not to mention that she's unknown, we've got a man who's primarily known for voicing the thoughts in his head who wouldn't like us to mention voicing the thoughts in his head. Are we allowed to say that Jane Moore works for the gutter press? Would she rather we didn't mention that? Is Dave Gorman asking us not to mention that he looks like a lecturer or goes on the Internet a lot? Is everybody using this show as a chance to make a fresh start and go in a new direction?

 This is a hard show to warm to in some ways, with the hero being vain, disagreeable and unfriendly. His one saving grace is that he's always right about the shoddiness of much British broadcasting of his time... Whether that was enough for viewers, I'm not sure.

A Comedy On This Day: Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive - 1984/ Who Do You Think You Are? (4 June 2007)

(Rob Brydon arrives in his car outside the Public Records Office in Cardiff.)

BRYDON (inside car to camera): (smugly) Here we go. They make a bit of a fuss of me in Wales.

(He leaves the car, which he - surely illegally - parks right in front of the building.)

INCREDULOUS PASSERBY: (in strong Welsh accent) WAN-KER!

 The series ends in a curious way - with the mock panel show perhaps having exhausted itself, we see Brydon appearing in (and behind the scenes of) a mock episode of Who Do You Think You Are? instead, skewering how some egotistical personalities seem to have little interest in family history in that programme.

 As you'd expect, it feels a bit different than before, partly because the parodied programme is of a higher quality, but also because there's rather less of a distinction between an obviously-performed programme like a panel show and the comedian's life offstage than there is in a biographical documentary.

 The distinction is quite subtle at its best moments, such as Brydon interacting awkwardly with his father - because the father is acting inappropriately for the camera in one scene, and then because that's how the two men are together in the next. It works well though, and was a good way to end it.

A Comedy On This Day: Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive - 1989 (28 May 2007)

 I would think that this show-within-a-show is the least popular or well-regarded series that Rob Brydon has made. The cynical tone and media setting isn't the sort of thing to attract a broad audience, while comedy fans and TV critics were bound to compare it unfavourably with The Larry Sanders Show.

 I liked it a lot myself - enough to have bought a DVD of the second series anyway! Its partly because its target - a lazily-conceived panel show - is precisely the sort of programme that I generally dislike but still find myself watching. The behind the scenes preparations very effectively skewer the moments in these sorts of shows that make me exclaim, "How on earth did that get in?" while my eyes roll - the particularly contrived questions and forced repartee.

 Casting is very strong in this series. Much of the comedy of the parts of Brydon's manager and producer comes from little nuances of their responses to the conceited star and wouldn't work nearly so well without Sharon Horgan or Russell Tovey to realise them. In particular, Tovey's reactions in a cringe scene (where a fascinated and disapproving Brydon continually presses him to explain various homosexual practices) manage to convey a whole spectrum of reactions; incredulity, discomfort, politely-disguised affront, teasing and at the emotional heart of the scene really quite liking the Brydon character even though he's an idiot.