"Bad news for Test Transmission fans," Alan reckons, mournfully. His radical mantra, as woolly as the lining of his bomber jacket, is "Truth". Out of his confusion comes some enjoyable comedy. Programmes that can't find a place in the schedules at any other time of year are bulldozed into August and left to rot among the repeats: the bussed-in mini-series, the season of documentaries about old age (honestly, there's one coming up), the stray dramas there's no other space for because Alan Yentob has over-commissioned. It's also a time when comedy experimentalists get to cut teeth and edges. Last night, in London Shouting, it was the turn of Alan Parker, the soi- disant Urban Warrior, to argue the case for getting his own series.

He's the brainchild - make that mouthchild, as there's no appreciable evidence of grey matter - of Simon Munnery, who plays him with gag-writing back- up from Graham "Father Ted" Linehan. Parker is the pop-eyed descendant of Wolfie Smith, another hapless spouter of agitprop, but he's more paranoid and less certain of his ideological position. But without the example set by blaxploitation, the wait could have been even longer.The "Blaxploitation" season starts today at the National Film Theatre, London SE1 To 31 August Booking: 0171-928 3232. The silly season is television's rubbish tip. But after blaxploitation petered out in 1975, he points out, "the industry was not prepared to give black audiences another set of images, icons and characters to respond to or select from". For that sensibility, black - and white - audiences would have to wait for 15 years and the arrival of Spike Lee with the African-American film explosion. They were turned out by the yard and most of them looked as though they could have been shot in someone's back yard."But Bogle still believes that for all their "pop simplicity" blaxploitation movies did reflect "a need to redress old wrongs and to articulate black feelings about race and racism".