Three Men In A Boat (BBC2)

MATTERS didn't begin promisingly with Rory McGrath yelling, "Keep the dog away from me".

Not a good omen when you're going to be confined to a small boat for a week with the aforementioned canine Loli, as well as two other performers perhaps best kept on leashes to prevent unruly behaviour.

The problems with Loli, not an animal particularly keen on the water, continued throughout the trip. "Don't sit on my foot with your wet arse," said Rory after the dog returned to the boat after a dip in the river.

As you can see from those brief encounters, these Three Men In A Boat bore little resemblance to the trio whose river journey from Kingston to Oxford was recorded in Jerome K Jerome's novel.

Putting three comic performers - McGrath, Griff Rhys Jones and Dara O'Briain - in a small boat and making them row along the Thames for a week was asking for trouble. There were no cries of "man overboard" but it wasn't all plain sailing, more messing about on the river.

Jerome's book was barely opened. A few passages were read out, but time and again the trio deviated from the original plan when the possibility of a pub meal or soft bed for the night came into view. I don't know how much was staged for the cameras but there was, I suspect, a bit of cheating going on.

The mix offered plenty of opportunities for comic turns. At the outset there was talk of Griff's incessant banter, O'Briain was referred to as Long John Silver for using a stick following a knee operation, and McGrath was cast as "just fat and incapable".

McGrath chatted up girls, managing to test a double bunk with one during a tour of a posh boat. He didn't overlook the educational value of the trip. "It's a learning experience," he told us. "I've learnt not to wear shorts in a forest of nettles".

Jones just prattled on and on, causing McGrath to ask: "Does your arse ever go to sleep? If so, do you stop talking?".

And O'Briain emerged as the sensible one, looking on in amazement at the antics of his rowing companions, although he spoiled things by entering them in a race in Wallington Regatta. They couldn't even win when the other team - of women - stopped rowing.

If the point of the documentary was to recreate Jerome K Jerome's novel, it failed by deviating so much from the original. They even rowed the final stretch of the river, despite the author himself completing the journey by train.

As a travelogue, there were shortcomings. "Oh, it's Hampton Court," being an example of the information from the trio.

Occasionally, the old and the new collided with spectacular effect. At Reading, they discovered a waterfront Tesco supermarket, where McGrath purchased a bacon sandwich. Not something, I bet, that Jerome K Jerome ever did.