That Week On TV: Dave Allen - God's Own Comedian, BBC2; Vicious, ITV

You could see it as he bounded onto the stage to present his first big TV show, in Sydney in 1963. At 26, in his second foreign country – he'd left Ireland at 16 and left his friends The Beatles behind in England ten years later – he was brazenly flirting with the studio audience. He had it.

Soon Australia had given Dave, unutterably sexy at that point with his black hair and charmed eyes, his own chat show, which from the clips in God's Own Comedian seemed to consist of him larking about aimlessly and assuredly with female co-hosts and, in one extended sequence, risking his life to demonstrate how to escape from a submerged car. Advised to stay in Australia and build on his success, Allen followed his first wife back to England and simply repeated it.

This documentary about one of the best stand-up comedians in British TV history didn't actually contain very much of his stand-up, because what audiences were buying wasn't a series of jokes, but time with Dave Allen - a share of the drink that was normally in his hand, on and off stage. "They wanted him to like them," explained Mark Thomas, a writer for Allen's later shows. Allen's honest independence was alluring but it took him, quite naturally, to extremely controversial places.

The flint inside the laconic exterior was formed young. Allen's newspaper-editor dad, a major local celebrity, had died when his son was 12, leaving the family struggling. But before that, a Catholic education had woken Allen up. "They hit me. They pulled my hair. They punched me. They demeaned me."

Allen's material about the Catholic church wasn't revenge, exactly. The Pope stripteasing, the "nuns farting next to lilies" and the rest came more from his fascination with humans at their hypocritical worst. He grinned widely when asked which of his routines about religion had offended the IRA: "Most of them!"

If it was true, he'd say it. Allen was a mainstream household name but did sketches about Apartheid, because he wanted to. His popularity kept rising.

Craven celebs would have consolidated with safe options. Allen wandered off to present a series of proto-Theroux documentaries on eccentric and marginalised people, drawing on his other, equal fascination: humans at their best. He took a straight acting role as a man in mid-life crisis in an Alan Bennett TV play. Allen was "looking for the meaning of life", said one of his collaborators, and that didn't sound ridiculous.

About the only black note in this fantastic programme - which may have glossed over all sorts of monstrous flaws in Allen's character, although I suspect it didn't and don't much care - was his last full series for the BBC in 1990, which was dogged by green-inkers moaning about the swearing. We saw Allen eruditely explain in a Clive James interview that there are more important things in the world to worry about than "rude sounds", but the Beeb caved and Allen was wounded. It was an ironic, pathetic, trivial but illuminating example of what Allen stood against and why he mattered.

Not that he thought he mattered much, Dave Allen being one of the few things in which Dave Allen didn't take too much interest. He made the best show he could but then went home, exchanged his smart stage garb for scruffy linen, and got on with reading, painting, drawing, and hosting sprawling weekenders for his extended family and friends. The ghost stories he would petrify the kids with at the Allen house in Devon sounded like better gigs than any of the TV ones.

"He had these many many abilities but he held them quietly," observed his widow Karin. Allen knew it was just a ride. He embodied Cyril Connolly's ambiguous maxim: you can't be too serious.

Finally, God's Own Comedian dealt with the mystery of the missing forefinger on Allen's left hand, by refusing to answer it. He'd told everyone something different. As his associates related the tale they'd heard, they had his glint in their eye.

Just saying it if it was funny and not stopping to care was the ethos of a new comedy unhelpfully broadcast by ITV at the same time on Monday night. Vicious (ITV Player) put Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen on a standard stage/sitcom lounge set - front door on the left, swing door to the kitchen on the right, stairs in the background - and let them howl and scratch for half an hour as Freddie and Stuart, who had been lovers for more than 50 years and had now settled into their bitter, argumentative dotage on the sofa.

The challenge was to enjoy the proceedings as much as the two stars, as McKellen ripped through scores of searingly bitchy lines, peaking with a cracker about Stuart "pouring your blandness over every surface", while Jacobi freed his right arm to become one of the campest limbs ever seen on TV.

Many viewers really, really didn't enjoy Vicious, throwing all sorts of criticisms that largely bounced off. It was stagey, retro and gaudy, they said, pointing out all the things it was actively trying to be. It entrenched gay stereotypes, they said, looking to a riotous sitcom for assiduous social realism. It used canned laughter, they said, referring to the live studio audience.

The complaint that had merit was that jokes mentioning rape are basically never funny, even if Frances de la Tour as fag-hag Violet fretting about virile young neighbour Ash (Iwan Rheon) was cartoonish and abstract enough to be as near to harmless as they come, and her line was sinfully well timed. (McKellen: "For God's sake Violet, nobody wants to rape you!" De la Tour: "What an awful thing to say.")

It should have been taken out, and was evidence that Vicious might not have a heart, which means it'll drag as soon as the one-liners falter. But while it's steaming, Vicious is hot.

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