It’s all Bean done before

AS TENDS to be the case with rather a lot of new comedies, I was expecting to find BBC2’s new sitcom MISTER WINNER (10pm) somewhat annoying. Especially given the way it had been sold to us.

What exactly should we expect of thisWinner character (played by Spencer Jones)? A fundamentally good-natured soul, apparently, who’s forever finding himself in calamitous situations, mostly of his own making.

What, like Michael Crawford’s Frank Spencer, did they mean, from Seventies sitcom Some

Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em? Or Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean, from the bafflingly popular Mr Bean?

Well, yes, as it turns out. But also no. By “yes”, I mean there are hints here of both that it’s impossible to ignore.

For example, you could easily substituteWinner for Spencer in tonight’s very first scene, where he’s lying semi-naked on a treatment table, undergoing what will prove to be a catastrophic acupuncture session (although, admittedly, Spencer would have kept his beret and tank top on).

And at times you could see Mr Bean landing himself in precisely the sort of pickle thatWinner ends up in later, when he stumbles upon a dusty old piano, figures it could be worth a bob or two, then quite by accident has people believing he’s a bona fide pianist for hire.

But there’s a significant difference that sets him apart from those two, and which makes this show rather good fun, in a pleasantly low-key sense. Namely, that his buffoonery isn’t nearly so exhaustingly full-on.

Winner is obviously a loser – that’s the heavy-handed irony at play there – but he’s more than just a cartoon twit in human form.

Somehow he feels more rounded, and so, thank goodness, a bit more real. Only a bit, mind.

Talking of real, THE TROUBLE WITH MAGGIE COLE (ITV, 9pm) continues to feel not remotely so. But I’m in too deep to quit now.

In episode four it’s Maggie’s husband, headmaster Peter (Mark Heap), who looks like paying the price for her drunken on-air spilling of the village beans.

But Peter’s scarily besotted secretary Karen (Vicki Pepperdine) is determined to protect him.

Elsewhere, THE REPAIR SHOP (BBC1, 8pm) gets to work on a Sixties jukebox, behind which there’s a particularly emotional story.

Owner Geoff Clark explains that it provided the music for the wedding reception he and his late wife Marie held in their dining room, and he talks of the spark of magic he felt when they danced to Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade.

Having the machine restored, he says, “Would take me back to that moment and the magic of holding her.”