THE all encompassing title of the documentary on Sky Arts is The History of Comedy.

The problem is while it looks at the history of comedy, it really is looking at the history of American comedy.

Season One included such episodes as:

- Spark of Madness: A look inside the mind of the comedian

- Parody and Satire: Including Mel Brooks and The Simpsons

- The Comedy of real life: How comedians such as Lena Dunham, Aziz Ansari and Larry David find humour in simple everyday life.

- Ripped from the headlines: Looked at topical humour

- Politics Aside: Looking at political humour.

Season two, which has three episodes, deals with sketch and improv in the second programme.

I enjoy a documentary and especially one dealing with the history of comedy.

But this documentary series I feel has a major problem.

After watching the Season Two, second episode, Sketch and Improv, I felt if you were living in Britain then you are being left out in the cold.

It is like you have missed the last 50 years of comedy as you do not live in America.

While I recognised the people being interview such as Steve Martin, Carl Reiner, Martin Short and Mike Myers, they were talking about programmes some I had heard about, some I had a miniscule amount of knowledge, while others drew a complete blank.

For example, Carl Reiner talked about Your Show of Shows which ran from 1950-1954.

It was broadcast live every week and lasted 90 minutes. I had heard of the show, I have even read about it and seen clips from it on YouTube. I have a reference for Sid Caesar having seen him in ‘It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world’ and he has been in various documentaries about comedy.

But that is my limit.

This occurred right throughout the episode. They were talking about Saturday Night Live, which while many of us might have heard of and it has been running in America for nearly 50 years, how many of you have living in the UK have actually seen any episodes? And modern episodes say from 2016, 2017 or 2018?

I saw some of episodes from the 1970s,when a complication show was on ITV many years ago, and I have seen snippets, mainly about the skits about Donald Trump and Sean Spicer. But it is not a show broadcast in the UK.

What I felt was cut off, there was no reference point to which I could cling to, I felt I was drowning in a documentary sea.

All the people being interviewed were talking about shows I had never seen, I am never likely to see and as I said have no link or cultural reference to plug into.

It left me as a viewer feeling frustrated and marginalised.

When a show was mentioned like Curb your Enthusiasm, which I have seen as it is broadcast in this country, the documentary seemed to move on at pace, leaving it and me as far behind as possible.

I cannot see a programme called The History of Comedy being broadcast in the USA when it solely focusses on British comedy.

Any television executive in America, would say, we can’t show that nobody will understand what this programme is talking about and have never seen the shows.

If it won’t work over there, why do British television planners think it will work over here.