Alan Yentob

Sometimes you watch a comedy and think "this is clever, isn't it?" and then you realise that, actually, you're not laughing all that much. So it was with W1A (BBC Two), a sort-of sequel to Olympics spoof Twenty Twelve that switches the satirical spotlight on to the BBC itself.

Look at us, we're the BBC and we can laugh at ourselves, is the subtext as David Tennant's arch voice-over guides us around BBC HQ in a maze of corporate speak, introducing us to a grazing herd of corporate types with a remit to think Big Thoughts and babble nonsense about 'appointment to view' television.

In the middle of it all, doing his dazed labrador thing, returns Hugh Bonneville's Ian Fletcher, this time as the BBC's new Head of Values, which seems to be exactly the same job as Director of Strategic Governance, played with obsequious brilliance by Jason Watkins, a comic actor of impressive versatility.

So far, so potentially side-splitting. Somehow, though, the in-jokery felt a touch too pleased with itself. A scene where Fletcher stumbled in on Salman Rushdie and Alan Yentob in the middle of an arm-wrestle bout was telling, a bit like that first day in a new job when someone says: "You don't have to be mad to work here but it helps" and you cringe, thinking: "Get me out of here now."

Let's not sound too harsh: W1A is ingeniously scripted, painting a neat picture of a culture where covering your back is number one in any ambitious individual's skill set. And things really picked up when, belatedly, Jessica Hynes returned as nightmare PR Siobhan Sharpe, a character so deliriously loathsome it really is funny. Whereas seeing a BBC run by bumbling idiots is merely believably bothersome: after all, we're paying for them.

Radio Times review

This new sitcom was born out of the success - but necessarily short shelf life - of the delicious Twenty Twelve. The idea of the BBC making a satire on the workings of the BBC is painfully circular but also, as it turns out, painfully funny.

Even so, the show walks a tightrope. In one scene here, Ian "So that's all good" Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville), now the BBC's newly appointed Head of Values, is hunting for a meeting room at Broadcasting House. He opens a door to find Alan Yentob and Salman Rushdie arm-wrestling while listening to opera. It's both a hilariously daring in-joke and the kind of thing you hope they keep in small doses. Too many knowing winks at the audience could get precious.

There are other celebrity cameos, but the joy of the show, as with Twenty Twelve, is the bland corporate-speak, the ability of conversations to progress with nothing being said in a flurry of Yes-no-absolutelys and Right-goods. This is writer John Morton's special gift (he's been doing it since People like Us on Radio 4) and he does it better than anyone.

Rejoice and be glad. Not before time, Simon Amstell's exquisite domestic sitcom is back for a second series. (The first went out in 2010, for heaven's sake: the fictional Simon's fictional mother wouldn't stand for that sort of work rate.)

To jog your memory, the premise here is a young presenter/comedian (Amstell, more or less playing himself, à la Hancock, Seinfeld, etc) sparring with his suburban Jewish family - notably his overbearing mother and abrasive aunt. Episodes involve long, spiky arguments that Simon joins through permanently gritted teeth. Within minutes, this opener has delivered a cringe-making level of farce (courtesy of Simon's one-night stand), a hilarious take on Alan Yentob, and the throwaway line, "He got expelled from his last school for killing a frog on a sponsored walk." It's a cripplingly awkward joy.

Spotting that there is no more solipsistic a profession than that of the standup comedian, Alan Yentob sets out to interview them, from Jimmy Carr to Jackie Mason, in this two-part Imagine. There are some interesting juxtapositions; a segment on Simon Amstell's deconstructionist comedy rubs up against Jim Davidson's limp attempts to legitimise a back catalogue of bigotry. Yet it's difficult to shake the suspicion that Yentob and co have overstretched themselves; the sheer number of comics gives the show a baggy, unfocused feel.

The problem I have is that I don't really feel anything for these characters - and I certainly don't feel sorry for them. I just can't empathise with people who bump into Richard E. Grant and Alan Yentob - both of whom cameo here - in their daily lives, and have, as I said before, the most utterly beautiful house.

I also can't believe that they couldn't just pull a few strings with their numerous contacts and get a job instantly, if they really tried.

And then there's the problem that it's not really very funny - I didn't laugh out loud once. I know you're less inclined to do that when watching on your own, as I was, but I didn't even come out of it desperate to see the next episode. The only spark, I'm afraid, came from Elizabeth's agent and Matthew's best friend, Leon. Played by Tom Hollander, he's the archetypal media monster - strutting around the office wearing a headset and ridiculous braces - and yet somehow he's hugely likable. I think this is probably because, in a rather dull and bland world, at least he brings something different. There's nothing terrible about this comedy, I'll admit, but the problem is that there's nothing particularly special about it, either.

Freezing is directed by Simon Curtis, who in real life is married to the American actress Elizabeth McGovern. In Freezing, she plays an American actress called Elizabeth, who is married instead to Matt, a publisher who has recently been let go by the publishing house he works for. And, despite being fictional, Matt, played by Hugh Bonneville, is on speaking terms with various of Elizabeth's celebrity colleagues.

Wood's script is mostly built around career disappointment, with Matt haplessly trying to crank up some alternative career and McGovern falling prey to the lethally short life-span of the female screen career. Her agent, played by Tom Hollander as a caricature of vulgar rapacity, wanted her to fill in a quiet patch with a cameo on Holby City, where she had a chance to play a woman allergic to horsehair. But McGovern was holding out for a part in Vincent Gallo's next movie, a sexual road trip, which triggered a certain anxiety in Matt about the director's notorious commitment to authenticity in performance. At which point, it struck me that Elizabeth McGovern would never get cast in a Vincent Gallo movie, and would probably run a mile if approached. He was only the director in question because he made Chloë Sevigny give him a blow job in The Brown Bunny and Matt's jealousy needed to be tweaked. And when Alan Yentob turned up - doing a bit of 'I'll have my people call your people' schmooze in another popular Notting Hill restaurant - it occurred to me that the target audience for this series consists of around 1,000 people, almost all of whom have a W11 postcode. It might be more cost-effective just to run off some DVDs and bike it round Curtis and Wood's Christmas-card list.

He's been down the TV road before (The Pall Bearer's Revue, his debut show came out in 1989) and describes that first experience as "a total flop, a complete failure". Despite the fact that he himself relentlessly told journalists on the eve of the show that it was "shite, don't bother watching it", Sadowitz now blames Alan Yentob for the show's failure. "He didn't give tapes to the press to review, he must feel like a stupid prat now," he spits.