Super Sunday

Just when exactly did Sunday evening TV get good? It always used to be an arid plain of 'Keeping Up Appearances', 'Monarch Of The Glen', 'Heartbeat' and 'Last Of The Summer Wine'. OK, so the latter two are still there, immovable monstrosities in the schedule, but there seems to be an awful lot of good stuff on to compensate.

Take BBC2's 'Help' for instance, the new vehicle for Paul Whitehouse. The show's co-writer Chris Langham plays a psychotherapist while Whitehouse undergoes radical transformations to play all of the patients. Where 'Happiness' was hit-and-miss, 'Help' is gentle, well-observed and genuinely funny. It's just a shame there are only two episodes left in the current series - surely it'll get recommissioned?

And immediately afterwards there's 'Outlaws', which, like many of BBC2's best recent offerings, started off life on BBC3. I never thought I'd be able to forgive Phil Daniels for 'Sunniside Farm' and his arsing about in 'Parklife', but he's excellent in this legal drama-cum-comedy. Good lawyer, bad lawyer - so far, so meh. But the script is superb and each episode I've seen has been very watchable indeed. So, another series would be nice, this time with hour-long episodes rather than the half-hour installments that seem to fly by too quickly, please.