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COMEDY is a funny thing, but not always as an ITV1 double bill demonstrates. Benidorm gave the channel a rare comedy hit last year. The series - along with tanned-to-a-crisp Madge in her wheelchair - makes a welcome return in tandem with newcomer, Teenage Kicks.

Not that new, as it began on Radio Two, where it should have stayed. The joke, and this is the only one, is that dad Vernon is living with his teenage children, sleeping in a cupboard under the stairs.

As he's played by Adrian Edmondson (who co-writes with Nigel Smith), he behaves like a big kid. This causes the studio audience to laugh hysterically. Or perhaps they were frustrated at failing to find the e m e r g e n c y exit.

As the episode is called Sex, you may gather that dad is trying, in his words, "to get his leg over" after his wife has left him from the European Commissioner for Soft Fruit, who is 5ft tall and Belgian. Yes, that's right, this is a comedy that makes jokes about height and foreigners. Another gag involves someone talking in a mock Chinese accent.

Vernon's children - as strong an advertisement for contraception as you'll find - are as amazed as we are when he finds a woman willing to sleep with him, or "dance the gentleman's excuse-me horizontal waltz" as someone puts it.

Like us, Vernon can't believe his luck.

"She's going to do it with me, I am a stud muffin,"

he boasts.

His date is played by Abigail Cruttenden, who also turns up in Benidorm. She ends the episode screaming her head off. Not at the memory of appearing in Teenage Kicks but because dripping wet Spanish waiter Mateo has just removed his trousers in front of her and asked for a towel.

This is an unwelcome reminder of a holiday fling which, together with encountering floating poo in the pool, rather spoiled her holiday last year.

Mateo is wet because he's just pulled Madge's elderly new beau, Mel (Geoffrey Hutchings), from the water. You can see why Madge (Sheila Reid), whose skin resembles the colour and texture of over-crispy bacon, is attracted to him - he owns five sunbed shops in Manchester.

The writers have realised that Madge is one of the funniest things in Benidorm and pay her more attention. We first find her in the airport toilet reeling from the effects of boiled egg curry on the plane. "Have I gone all pale?," she asks, voicing her greatest fear.

She's soon sitting in a hired mobility scooter.

Son-in-law Mick notes that he's always wanted to see her in an electric chair, but this isn't exactly what he had in mind.

Madge has Mel earmarked for marriage but he won't sleep with her yet. "I can't expect to share a bed until I've taken her up the aisle,"

he says innocently. The old ones - Madge and innuendo like that - are the best.

We leave Mel unconscious by the poolside, althought whether it's a heart attack or the effect of his thong being too tight has yet to be established. I wish him and the series well.

Captain Jack Harkness in Torchwood laughs in the face of death. He can afford to as he can't die.

He and his colleagues are buried in an exploding building in the penultimate episode of this second, uneven series. This allows for flashbacks showing how and why they joined the alien-hunting, rift-patrolling Torchwood organisation.

Captain Jack's back story begins with the caption "1,392 deaths earlier", a neat play on the usual two years earlier or what have you.

It begins with him being tortured by two Victorian ladies and quite enjoying it. "Electrodes to the nipples, the start of a good night," enthuses Jack, a man who'll have sex with anything animal, vegetable or mineral.

He needs something to cheer him up. Being killed 14 times in six months is as much fun as watching Teenage Kicks.