In spite of being on the dole, Alex 'Eck' Dundee has a reasonably pleasant life, a decent room in a shared flat, an embryonic romance with the sexually permissive Jools, and a winning optimism about his job prospects that carries him through his many interviews. But all of this is disrupted by the arrival of Eck's late father, spirited down from heaven for reasons that neither of them understands. Said dad, Willie, who died 14 years earlier, surmises that he must have been sent down to help his son through a particularly difficult patch, but actually all of Alex's problems arise from his father's presence. Unlike most screen ghosts, Willie can be seen by everyone, not just the hauntee, and, by way of an apparent supernatural tradition, he is linked to his son by an invisible umbilical chord that prevents them from straying more than a few feet from one another. This causes Alex untold problems, as his dad - garishly dressed, heavily cologned and with forthrightly expressed oldfashioned views - is not the ideal companion for a would-be dashing young man about town.

My Dead Dad was a bit of an odd fish and not just because of its supernatural storyline. Forbes Masson (former half of the comedy double-act Victor and Barry) was a dependable lead but the whole thing just didn't seem to gel. It also had a hard job playing down its stage origins, the premise having first appeared as a theatre play, Dead Dad Dog.