Sensitive Skin (BBC2)

Doc Martin (ITV1)

IT was the moment when Freddie "Parrotface" Davies appeared in a white naval uniform and declared that he was Frustration that I gave up on Sensitive Skin.

I knew he was supposed to represent that feeling because Joanna Lumley, as a 61-year-old suffering an emotional crisis, had asked him his identity - as you do when a man in a uniform materialises unexpectedly at your window.

Sensitive Skin exists in that no man's land known as the comedy drama, meaning it's neither one thing nor the other. Not very funny and not very dramatic.

This series is, I think, supposed to be more drama than comedy. There are funny lines but the overall impression is of people being depressed because they are either getting old or their son has left his dog to be looked after for the weekend.

Joanna Lumley does the opposite of what she does as Patsy in Ab Fab. She underplays rather than overplays, which involves spending much time staring wistfully into the distance.

Denis Lawson is her husband of 30 years who has to write a newspaper article on The Carpenters and doesn't think he can bring himself to make a joke about Karen's career disappearing from view as she herself did due to an eating disorder. Of course, by raising the matter he told the joke anyway.

There was a running gag about a peeing dog and a drug dealer lurking outside the couple's home. About the only time I smiled was when Lawson's character told how a rival author had written that book club members should carry his novel around to wile away the winter hours - so they could feel the heat from the fire while they were burning it.

Doc Martin also falls into the comedy drama category, and to my mind is much more successful at combining the two. Viewers thought so too, making it one of the most watched new series of the past year.

Much of the reason it works is the presence of marvellous Martin Clunes as the top surgeon who's fled the operating theatres of London for a practice in a small Cornish village. The reason for his new life is that he "sometimes has small panic attacks". What he means is that he comes over queasy at the sight of blood, not particularly helpful if you're someone who carves up people for a living.

The comedy springs from the array of wonderfully eccentric characters that populate Portwenn, while the drama stems from the clever doc dealing with a patient suffering from what might be termed the disease of the week.

As the series returned, he was diagnosing elderly Muriel Steel, who was trying to stop being packed off to an old people's home. "Most of the time, she doesn't know if it's Tuesday or Selfridges," said her son.

Much the same way, reviewers don't know whether to laugh or cry when faced with something like Sensitive Skin.