The queen may be dead, but long live the Royles in a fine piece of comedy The Royle Family: the Queen of Sheba BBC1

When we left the family six years ago, Jim was expressing honest doubts about the benefits of wide-screen television, suspecting that it would be "the same old shite but wider". My fear regarding beloved sitcoms is that they will return with their humour broadened. Jim was right to be suspicious about television in general. I had no need to be worried about The Royle Family. It came back in this one-hour special (29 October, 9pm) not broader, but deeper, its authors Caroline Aherne, Craig Cash and Phil Mealey finding profundity in the shallows of working-class sentimentality.

The Queen of Sheba was Nana, who, lying in her bed in the lounge after a bout of poor health, began the episode as the power behind the throne - or at least behind Jim's armchair - and ended up dead. (Incidentally, she really did die, unlike DS Tennison whom, having relied on the popular press, I confidently and wrongly predicted the other week was going to snuff it on Prime Suspect. My red-faced, blustery apologies.) Nana's valetudinarianism won her the regal nickname from Jim, whose reputation as laziest Royle, permanently threatened by his daughter Denise, was now in ruins. In a powerful metaphor for his impotence, Nana stole the batteries from his TV remote control to work her hand-held fan. Jim's fury was not to be assuaged by anyone reminding him that he could change channels by making the trek to the set itself. "That's exactly what she wants," he raged.

As Nana made her progress to the crematorium and Jim and Barbara sank deeper into the upholstery, it was left to the younger Royles to get on with life. Antony had made the most progress, his career going well enough to earn him a business suit, an invitation to a conference in Milton Keynes and the bullying of his father, who saw him as a soft touch for 50 quid. Denise was pregnant again. Her first-born had graduated from being Baby David to Little David, dressed in a T-shirt and bomber jacket identical to his father's. In Antony's absence, Dave now resided at the bottom of the Royle pecking order and, consequently, had to make the tea.

With every Royle partnered off, attention turned to Cheryl (Jessica Stevenson), the hapless compulsive eater, who attempted to jump-start her romantic life with a lonely-hearts ad in the evening paper. Her criteria were not demanding - "skin colour not essential, no height restriction" - and attracted all sorts: a middle-aged loser with a Ken Dodd haircut, a biker who liked paintballing and a Hasidic Jew called Solomon. Each date was conducted unerotically on the Royle sofa, in front of the entire Royle family. It was never going to work out between her and the last one, though; Cheryl could abandon her religion but not her pork pie habit. Yet hope sprang eternal, and by the end she and the Royles' obese friend Twiggy were making eyes at each other over the party food at Nana's wake.

This was Liz Smith's episode, and as the Queen of Sheba she was treated with a script that required her to be cunning, mischievous and thick, as well as candid, generous and wise. In her death, all life was present or, as their neighbour Mary put it: "She was alive right up till the end." Before she went, as Barbara put her in curlers for one last time, she said a quiet thank you, and Sue Johnston as Babs made it look as if her own heart and not only her character's was breaking.

Nana had wanted her funeral to take its mood from the word's first three letters, and what FUN they had! It was a very musical episode, with Jim, Nana and Joe breaking into song, incidental music from Johnny Cash, and a choreographed performance of wiggling builders' cleavage as a laminated floor was laid. Nana's ashes were placed on top of the wide-screen telly, where the family would never forget her.

The Royle Family's naturalism is often cited as a precursor to the documentary style of The Office. This episode reminded one of how Aherne and Cash always aimed higher, trying to raise ordinary speech to the height of poetry. They achieved it.

Andrew Billen is a staff writer for the Times

Pick of the week

The Culture Show – Spielberg at 60
4 November, 7.15pm, BBC2
The director is in revealing mood, apparently, as he talks to Mark Kermode about his dream works . . .

Into the West
4 November, 9pm, BBC2
. . . but probably won't mention this, his new series on the real Wild West.

The Last Aztec
9 November, 9pm, Channel 4
What the hell does the 2003 Booker winner DBC Pierre know about the Aztecs? Let's find out.

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