Bergerac

Jersey's own Will Smith could be described as being 'obsessed' with Bergerac but that might be putting it a little bit lightly.

The cult detective show has features in more than one of Will's live shows and is about to  make up the entirety of a new show for BBC Radio 4.

The show is called 'The Tao of Bergerac' and is the bizarre love child of a cult detective  show from the 1980s set in Jersey, a Jersey lad obsessed with that same cult detective show  and an audiobook about Tao read by the star of the detective show.

That detective show is Bergerac, the obsessed man is Will Smith and the star is John Nettles.

Of course John now lives in Midsummer where the crime rate increased dramatically upon his arrival - and the crime rate in Jersey dropped at the same time.

Bergerac-obsessed Will has one guiding force in his life - an audio book of John Nettles reading the ancient Chinese text of the Tao.

Will described the show as a "mixture of some stand up and sitcom and a bit of a chat show where I talk about an issue that's been happening to me and use John Nettles' audio book of Tao, which is an ancient book of Chinese wisdom, as my guide and it normally goes very wrong."

If you're new to Jersey and haven't heard of Bergerac then you must be an odd hermit - or an alien - but just in case you are one of those you should still be OK with the Tao of Bergerac.

Will said on his My Space profile "It's about the life lessons you can learn from Bergerac, although that's very loose and you don't have to know anything about Bergerac to get it."

Although the show has a base in Bergerac each presentation contains a distraction that quickly leads you into the real subject or the show: the obsessions and insecurities of Will Smith.

Our protagonist see's himself as being bound by duty, crippled by politeness and battered by obligation, Will feels like an anachronism in today's loutish and uncouth Britain.

Each episode slides into an aspect of Will's inadequacy in dealing with modern life.

The show will feature a range of topics, including: social ineptitude, his utterly failing politeness in a boorish culture and his lack of masculine prowess. These give full rein to Wills intricately developed stand-up persona.

According to the description for the Audiobook that is due in September “His narrative of intemperate personal recollection is aided and developed by vengeful voxpops, illustrative flashbacks and reconstructions, and agitated audio diaries about his dysfunctional relationship with his boorish flatmate.”

It isn't until the climax of outrage that Will is reminded that he's meant to be talking about Bergerac.

But fortunately his obsession with the show is so intense that, with only minutes to spare, he redeems himself with a tour-de-force: Six Degrees of Bergerac where he links the show to any audience-suggested film in six steps or less.