BCG Daily Saturday 22nd March 2014

Comedy review: Miranda Hart, Glasgow

Attempting to transpose the wild success of her slapstick sitcom into an all-conquering stage show at the Glasgow Comedy Festival was always going to be a risky adventure for Miranda Hart. The sad result is a two-hour metaphorical pratfall with a set which has a baffling structure and depressingly poor content. Vaguely set up as a tacky party, Hart is tripped up by not knowing whether to fully capitalise on her exaggerated persona or just truly be herself.

Comedy review: Nick Revell: Closet Optimist, Glasgow

One of the true, steadfast veterans of political stand-up in the UK, Nick Revell has been fighting the good fight for decades. And yet somehow, despite his sardonic cynicism, he's hoping against hope that things will improve.

Jimmy Perry interview

The sitcom writer talks about his life in showbiz, his Dad's Army heroes and the one that got away...

Radio Times review

Early in his monologue, veteran comic Stewart Lee delivers a traditional, well-turned, stand-up gag. Then when it gets a laugh, he deadpans, "You see, I can write jokes. I just choose not to."

What he mostly does instead is meander around a topic - here it's prejudice - working from his experience as a prickly liberal with a short intellectual fuse. The results are a kind of post-stand-up comedy.

A long routine involves the imaginary black wife he claims to have invented as a put-down to a racist cabbie, then branches off into a discussion of his imaginary gay husband and his actual Irish wife - each painted in deliberately stereotypical colours.

More than any other comedian, Lee keeps folding the jokes back on themselves like origami, critiquing himself and the audience. It could get wearisome but he knows exactly how far he can take it.

Radio Times review

One of the biggest annual events in the international comedy calendar, the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal, Canada has played host to virtually every major comedian of the last 30 years.

In the first of two exclusive compilations for Comedy Central - older viewers will remember the days when Just For Laughs found its natural home on Channel 4 - stars including Kristen Schaal, Russell Howard, Mark Watson and the great Eddie Izzard take to the stages of Montreal's grand Place des Arts and the funkier Club Soda.

For better or worse, an interesting aspect of this coverage is seeing how internationally unknown British comedians fare in front of a foreign audience. Izzard is an established star, but will the lightweight whimsy of Howard and Watson survive the transatlantic crossing?

Radio Times review

This episode, about guarding PoWs, isn't top-drawer Dad's but does feature Mainwaring stuck down a hole "like Winnie the Pooh", Godfrey delivering the unimaginable line "Your tiny hand is frozen" to an Italian soldier, and more heroic sentence-mangling from Jones. Plus another of those typically sunny location shoots. As Jimmy Perry recently recalled for Radio Times, "Usually the weather was very good. We called it David Croft Weather."

Radio Times review

Lance Corporal Jones wouldn't have approved. Victoria Wood crunches the gears of his butcher's van as she pootles around familiar Norfolk locations for her fabulous 2000 tribute to Croft and Perry's immortal sitcom. Cast and crew chip in with glorious back-room stories (Bill "Hodges" Pertwee is especially good), and there are tantalising glimpses in home-movie footage of the actors on location.

Harry Hill to hide from Cheryl Cole at X Factor musical

Harry Hill has admitted he plans to "duck out of the way" when Cheryl Cole comes to see the premiere of his X Factor musical.

Rev preview

Olivia Colman says: "I really liked Rev because it's well written, it's beautiful and the people are both lovable and flawed."

Sport Relief hit 9.53 million viewers for Only Fools

The charity event peaked with 9.53 million viewers (41.4%) for the return of Del Boy and Rodney in Only Fools and Horses between 9.30 and 9.45pm.

Review: Rev, BBC2

Best of all in this episode is the aforementioned Kayvan Novak as Yussef. Novak has come a long way since Fonejacker and really is a very versatile comic actor.

Review: The Pin, Soho Theatre, W1

I've seen so many shows at the Edinburgh Fringe over the years that a show must have something good about it if I can still remember bits of it two years later.

Rev preview

Rev, since it burst onto our screens in 2010 has remained one of my favourite TV sitcoms of all time. I love the way it's acted, the mix of characters, and of course the subject matter and the way that's dealt with.

Tom Hollander's Rev confessions

James Wood and Tom Hollander reveals the six commandments of making a hit sitcom.