Alex Jennings

That's Mine, This Is Yours (Radio 4, Wednesday) was a wryly romantic comedy by Peter Souter whose success on radio (Goldfish Girl, for one) sent him rocketing off to ITV where writers with a gift for the wistful are not cherished as much as those whose scripts come dripping in murder. Here, with brilliant Tamsin Greig and Alex Jennings as the divorced couple meeting to divide up the leftovers of their marriage and clever Gordon House as director, he shone again.

Peter Souter's play is a romantic comedy. Alex Jennings and Tamsin Greig play a couple who are splitting up. They meet in their old, cold house to divide up their joint possessions. There's a locked sea chest, an old tandem, a little tin chicken that lays tin eggs, that sort of stuff. As they go through it all they're bound to think of how they got them (just like in that great song, Thanks For the Memory) and the icy atmosphere warms up. They know each other well. And this writer (remember his Goldfish Girl?) knows how funny that can be.

Return of Alistair Beaton and Tom Mitchelson's satire on the modern-day world of newspapers. It's not "hold the front page" any more, but rather "how many hits did that make on the website?" Yet everyone needs news and the electronic media still need print to feed from. So here's Oliver (Alex Jennings) sitting in the editor's chair, old school ace reporter Maddox (John Sessions) still turning up the splash stories but needing support from web whizz Freddy (Stephen Wight) who's really a posh lad (and rich with it) but talks street lingo for extra cred.

Melissa Murray's witty play, based on a true story, is about how Richard Brinsley Sheridan (played by Lorcan Cranitch) is, in 1796, a producer down on his luck, needing some. He's been offered the find of a lifetime, a lost play by Shakespeare about an ancient British king and queen. His star, John Philip Kemble (brilliantly played by Alex Jennings) has agreed to take the lead. But what's this? The young man who claims to have "discovered" the play, William Henry Ireland (Rufus Wright) seems suspiciously familiar with the text.

In 1796, hoping to cash in on public interest in a "lost" Shakespeare play said to have been found in an attic, Richard Brinsley Sheridan had outbid Covent Garden to stage Vortigern and Rowena at his own Drury Lane theatre. Melissa Murray's comedy follows in a fine Radio 4 tradition of tales of historic thespian folk with a backstage account of the play's first (and only) night. Here is Sheridan, peering at his sozzled nose in the mirror; the great actor Kemble, portrayed with just enough 18th-century luvvieness by Alex Jennings; and the cast and crew who know that if the play fails they won't get paid. The performance was a sell-out, for as Sheridan had observed to Kemble, "every Englishman considers himself as good a judge of Shakespeare as of his pint of porter". And he was right.

Here's a quick turnaround. The first transmission of Alistair Beaton's comedy serial finished only recently. Still, I don't suppose they can't often afford a cast as glittering as this so why not make the most of it? Never mind that I think it's shouty, overacted, clattering with clichés and probably originally intended for TV. See what you make of its battle for a newspaper's soul between traditional hack (Robert Lindsay), wily editor (Alex Jennings), assorted nasty females and posh Freddie (Ben Willbond) who's pretending to be a Rasta.

When you need a splenetic old-codger role, then put a call in for Robert Lindsay. Nobody does it better, as he proves in Alistair Beaton's satire on the parlous state of the daily newspaper industry. (Lindsay and Beaton have been teamed before, in A Very Social Secretary, about the Blunkett affair.) As wily old hack Maddox, he rails in protest against the tide of sexy online editions, fluffy celebrity-led stories, the obsession with new media, and endless marketing ploys. "I'm sorry, but it comes as no surprise to me that people aren't willing to shell out a pound for a double-page sofa advert, free DVD, and a full-colour wall-chart displaying 68 varieties of mushroom." Couldn't agree more, old bean. To be generous, there is more than a touch of Drop the Dead Donkey about this, but the back-up characters are sometimes mere one-shot jokes, the exception being Alex Jennings's gloriously pragmatic and priapic editor, Oliver. Don't miss his When Harry Met Sally turn in the second episode. If you do, you can always listen to it online!

Sudden death, the arrival of an unassuming individual who becomes a catalyst, and the condemnation of contemporary mores are the themes of Ayckbourn's 1988 play, Man of the Moment, produced brilliantly by Jarvis and Ayres. Less convoluted but more moving, the play centres on a bank robber turned TV celebrity, played chillingly by Tim Piggott-Smith and one of his victims, portrayed as the mouse who roared by Alex Jennings. Janie Dee is heartbreaking as the second wife of the criminal who is his greatest critic but can't break free from his vicious grasp. Most of all, this is a condemnation of how popular culture too often ignores the worthy and deifies the worthless.

When a play tackles subjects as ethics of have-a-go heroics, redemption and reconciliation, and the cult of celebrity, you fear that something has to give. But when the play is written by Alan Ayckbourn, stars Tim Pigott-Smith, Janie Dee and Alex Jennings, and is directed by Martin Jarvis you can lay those fears to rest.

It's the tale of Vic Parks, a criminal who, having spent nine years in jail for a botched bank robbery, has become a television celebrity. Now he is to appear on a TV show in which the host Jill Rellington intends to bring him face to face with Douglas Beechey - the unassuming clerk who foiled the robbery.

The production retains Ayckbourn's comic touch by asking why society is more in thrall to villains than heroes, and keeps the laughs dark right to the end.