TV Eye: Prehistoric laugh

There was something about Mary in the new season's first episode of bro'Town. Get it? Dad was "going round with" a Canadian called Mary. I haven't heard that - going round wif - since I was at Otahuhu College where that's what you did with boys when you were in the third form.

Well, nobody ever suggested, at least I don't know anybody who has, that bro'Town was sophisticated humour. And it's entirely possible that going round wif is back in. I wouldn't know; I'm too old.

I'm possibly too old for bro'Town, too. Although the going round wif did make me laugh, but in an old person's sort of way. Dad having "tarantula" sex - get it? - just made me groan. As a study of a loving but dysfunctional family it's pretty good though. Dad: "Son, we don't often talk like this because ... I just can't be bothered."

There are similarities between bro'Town's dad and The Simpsons' Homer: they both like beer. And that line, "Son, we don't often talk like this because ... " could have come straight from Homer's mouth.

A new season of The Simpsons, series number 17, now that really does make you feel old. Watching the Simpsons, as we do almost every night because ... Well, it's there and never mind that we've seen most of the re-runs before. So far, after the first two episodes of the new season, we like the re-runs better.

It's become comfort telly. You don't really need to have a nice bowl of mashed potato every night, but if it's being offered, what we feel about is like Homer and his pork chops - it's a nice thing to have for tea.

Those first two new episodes though, just weren't very good. They had the lull of familiarity but not the edge of earlier episodes. Marg got mad at Homer for getting in debt to the Mafia and having to pay it off by letting some boys shoot a "snuggle" movie in the family home.

So she left and found happiness, briefly, with a man who saves sea cows. There was a funny scene which involved Homer playing checkers with a chicken. You knew who was going to win. But the thing didn't hang together; it was funny only in bits. So, more than a bit like bro'Town then.

There is a very funny series - although not as in funny ha ha - on at the moment called Prehistoric Park. It is, actually, quite bonkers. It involves a zoologist called Nigel who keeps going back to pre-historic China by means of some whizzy technology that is the stuff of bad sci-fi movies.

He goes there to rescue about-to-become-extinct animals so as to take them back to a place called Prehistoric Park where they can be saved.

Prehistoric Park is shot to look like a documentary - you can see the mikes, and sometimes a dino will sneeze all over the camera lens. This is, I suppose, intended to give it some vestige of reality. This might allow you to suspend belief if wanting to believe that some idiot called Nigel could go back to the past and stumble about rescuing extinct beasties was your thing.

Except that the beasties are so obviously fake that Prehistoric Park is occasionally funny ha ha. The scene where the rescued mammoth had a hair cut, with what looked like gardening shears, because it was too hot in the future, was inspired.

I'm not sure what it means that this scene made me laugh more than anything from the new seasons of either bro'Town or The Simpsons.