TV review

The Mighty Boosh (BBC3)

IT'S business as usual at Holby hospital. "Okay, I'm cutting the skin at the back. The organs may slip so stand by with some large wet swabs," says surgeon Tom Campbell-Gore (with the accent on the gore).

This is just an ordinary day for hospital staff - conjoined twins to be separated, a pensioner "giving birth" to a dead baby, one surgeon being investigated for dodgy behaviour, another leaving after failing to get permission for an operation.

No-one can accuse Holby doctors of not knowing what they're doing, although the surgeon who described the twins' separation as "a voyage into the dark" wasn't a very good spokesman.

They keep us viewers up to date at every single move with cries of "let's tie up the remaining branches" (even if it does sound like the words of a tree not a human surgeon). Or "oh no, it's a heavy bleeder". Or even, "okay, everybody, I'm going to cut the coronary artery".

Easy as it is to mock a series like Holby City, you have to admire the way they work the formula week in, week out with much skill and expertise. Just like Dr Campbell-Gore says, "If we find anything unexpected, we will stay composed and improvise".

As well as the twins, the surgeons needed separating as Dr Campbell-Gore's ego kept getting in the way. That he ended up getting punched was no surprise, only that it happened outside the operating theatre.

The puncher was Ed, under investigation for letting a patient's condition deteriorate to ensure surgery was brought forward and who expected ex-lover Chrissie to lie, implicate herself and thus save his career.

She was busy wandering around looking for a vital piece of medical equipment. "We need a cardiac surgeon," she said, stumbling into the operating theatre. Why couldn't she just pick up a phone and order one like anyone else orders pizza?

Meanwhile, rummaging around in the stomach of an elderly woman - and we were spared little of the gory goings-on - produced "a stone child". She'd become pregnant a long time ago, the baby had developed outside the uterus and then died. "I realise this must have come as a huge shock," said Dr Diane with masterful understatement.

This was a problem as the woman's adopted daughter believed her mother could never have children. Here was evidence she'd had an affair because, it emerged, her husband preferred men. This signalled the end of a marriage after 46 years, or as they would say in theatre: "Stand by for separation".

Mr Campbell-Core wasn't quite as mad as the scientist in The Mighty Boosh putting a human head on a snake's body, one of his range of mutants. This surreal comedy, written by and starring Julian Barrett and Noel Fielding as eccentric zookeepers, has its moments - but not nearly enough to say with certainty that BBC3 has another edgy comedy hit on its hands.

Full Circle, Newcastle Theatre Royal

JOAN Collins must be the one actress more disappointed than most at having her age slip from sexagenarian to septuagenarian, but the 71-year-old purrs and pouts her way through a performance that she was almost destined to play.

You could almost feel it is no acting required as she lavishly displays wealthy widowed mother-of-three Denise Darvel in this reworking of Alan Melville's 1952 Parisian comedy Dear Charles. But Madame Darvel has a dark secret, all her children were conceived out of wedlock, she's never married, 'husband Charles' is just an old oil painting bought in Brighton and two of her offspring want to go up the aisle.

Dispensing with pretence involves reuniting each child with a father and displaying a large cast of ageing cameos. Nickolas Grace amuses as fiery Polish pianist Jan Letzaresco; Gary Raymond nicely underplays mysterious Frenchman Dominique LeCler but John Quayle revels in the role of first love Sir Michael Anstruther, the Northumberland knight. Daniel Roberts (Walter), Giles Cooper (Bruno) and Jessica Robinson (Martine) flesh out the younger roles and pleasantly go through the essentials of farce with long-suffering maid Marthe, played by Sheila Bernette.

Harking back to the comic respectability of the 1950s using a play favoured by the amateur companies would carry mighty handicaps were it not for the appeal of Ms Collins. Who else could maintain comic timing while keeping everything inside quite a low-cut jade green dress? If you've still got it, then why not flaunt it?

Viv Hardwick

* Runs until Saturday. Box Office: 0870 905 5060