Count Arthur Strong - the BBC television series

DVD box set review

BBC Television created many classic comedies in its heyday (the 1970s) and it's a sad fact that very few of the comedy series made in the past few decades can hold even the dimmest candle to such shows as Fawlty Towers and The Good Life. One recent series that does compare well with past triumphs, however, is the superlative non-stop laugh-fest that is Count Arthur Strong. Developed from a long-running and phenomenally successful radio series - undoubtedly the funniest thing to go out on Radio 4 - this is the long-awaited TV outing for the infamous Count Arthur, a permanently out of work actor with an unrivalled penchant for mayhem and destruction.

The eponymous angel of death in the homburg hat and smart brogues was created and performed by the über-talented writer-actor Steve Delaney. In the TV series he is ably partnered by Rory Kinnear (son of the much-loved comedy legend Roy Kinnear), who plays the forever self-loathing and staggeringly indecisive son of Arthur's former comedy partner. The Delaney-Kinnear pairing is a match made in comedy heaven and provides not just the unstoppable comedy dynamo for the series, but also its emotional heart.

Graham Linehan, a gifted comedy writer with a formidable list of achievements behind him (notably Father Ted) shared writing duties with Delaney on the TV series and it was undoubtedly his input that helped to make the Count a far more well-rounded and sympathetic character (in the radio series he comes across too often as a bigoted misogynistic monomaniac with a tendency for 'going off on one' at the drop of a cream cracker). The humour is tamer, far less crude, than in the radio series admittedly, but it widens the appeal of the Count considerably. This is a show for all ages and all walks of life.

Count Arthur Strong ran to three series on the BBC before it was mercilessly axed in 2017 owing to disappointing viewing figures - which was more the fault of the haphazard and insane scheduling than a reflection of the quality of the programme. Written for a family audience, inexplicably the second series was put out on BBC 1 after the ten o'clock news. The first series faired no better on BBC 2. These days, audience size is deemed to be the absolute be-all and end-all of TV programme making, so the Count's television demise was inevitable, given that the Beeb made so little effort to give it a decent first innings.

Thankfully, the entire series is now available on pristine DVD, for us to enjoy forever, and, believe me, few comedies stand up to repeat viewing as much as Count Arthur's zany antics. Series 1 establishes the relationship between the Count and Kinnear's character Michael and is generally less funnier than the radio series, although it does have one incredibly hilarious episode, in which Arthur persuades Michael into running Jack the Ripper tours from an ice cream van after a disastrous (and highly litigious) foray into Cyberspace.

Series 2 is where the show really finds its feet and become non-stop side-splittingly funny from the get-go. This includes some of the TV series' best episodes, including one in which the Count's inability to cope with the clocks going back results in unimaginable chaos at a flying school. Best of all is the third series, in which our homburg-headed hero performs a riotous exorcism, takes on London's criminal underworld single-handedly, goes on Safari in a clapped out and potentially lethal roadster, hosts a totally weird weekend devoted to soup and - best of all - gets mixed up to his crazed eyeballs with the sinister cult of scientology (thanks to some free biscuits).

Just why the BBC executives chose to kill off such a brilliant, engaging and downright hilarious series in its prime baffles me - it seems perverse in the extreme given the current level of crass mediocrity that pervades broadcasting today. We still have the audio CDs of the radio series (which are also well-worth buying) as well as the DVDs of the TV series, and for true Count Arthur aficionados, there are also the DVDs of the Count's best stage exploits (not to be missed are The Sound of Mucus, The Man Behind the Smile and Count Arthur Strong's Command Performance). Let's hope that one day the Beeb (or another TV programme maker) will see sense and give our anarchic hero another crack of the whip on television. Count Arthur may present himself as a relic of a bygone era, but he seems oddly pertinent to our jaded, self-regarding and hopelessly topsy-turvy age.