Alice-Azania Jarvis

The gist, broadly, is this: Jinsy (population 971) is stuck somewhere in the 1970s, governed by Arbiter Maven - whose nasal hairs offer insights into the future - and populated by means of a random televised "marriage lottery". It is brilliantly done. The world that's been created is genuinely surreal, with its televised punishment round-ups, bizarre clothing and odd religion, which sees residents don cupboards in a mistaken attempt to welcome the messiah. It's part Yellow Submarine, part Hitchhiker's Guide, part League of Gentlemen. Written by its two stars, Justin Chubb and Chris Bran, it offers a slice of oddball humour quite unlike anything else to be found.

The opening episode of This Is Jinsy has, in fact, aired before: featuring David Tennant as an overly camp television game-show host, and revolving around life on the tiny, other-worldly island of Jinsy, it was broadcast in March of last year as a pilot on BBC. Now it's back, as a full-blown (but sadly, after episode one, Tennant-less) series on Sky Atlantic.

The gist, broadly, is this: Jinsy (population 971) is stuck somewhere in the 1970s, governed by Arbiter Maven - whose nasal hairs offer insights into the future - and populated by means of a random televised "marriage lottery". And, Tennant or no, it is brilliantly done. The world that's been created is genuinely surreal, with its televised punishment round-ups, bizarre clothing and odd religion, which sees residents don cupboards in a mistaken attempt to welcome the messiah. It's part Yellow Submarine, part Hitchhiker's Guide, part League of Gentlemen. Written by its two stars, Justin Chubb and Chris Bran, it offers a slice of oddball humour quite unlike anything else to be found.

Last night's TV: Trollied/Sky1

I'm concerned about Jane Horrocks. She's being typecast, or so it seems to me. First that Tesco advert - you know the one, from the mid Nineties, the one she said paid for her home ("Tesco Towers") and stopped her having to do dross TV. That's as opposed to her new series for Sky1, Trollied, which, presumably, she doesn't think is dross TV.

John Sullivan's death gave added poignancy to last night's Rock & Chips, the occasional series of prequels to his masterpiece, Only Fools and Horses. As with earlier instalments, it was carried by a combination of nostalgia and charm (though not, it's fair to say, ground-breaking comedy). It was all there: the soundtrack - Buddy Holly followed by Chubby Checker followed by The Marvelettes followed by The Shirelles - the hammy performances, the jokes so subtle they could double as sledgehammers. The best bit came when the young Del Boy took posh girl Barbara out for dinner. "Waiter," he called out, on inspecting his plate of fish. "I think you've dropped a bit of lemon on my fish." "That's garnish," said the waiter. "Oh no - I think you'll find it's lemon."

I met Ronnie Corbett once. It was during my time as a gossip columnist on this paper. I spotted him at a party and, somewhat starstruck, decided to approach and introduce myself. He was all right, I suppose, though not terribly polite. He didn't, he sniffed, read The Independent. More of a Telegraph man (must be the jokes). Anyway, he's 80 now, and BBC2 has devoted a few hours of scheduling to the occasion. First up was a rerun of The Two Ronnies Christmas Special from 1984, and then Being Ronnie Corbett, a fawning programme of dedications. We got Matt Lucas and David Walliams, Catherine Tate and Michael Palin, Miranda Hart, Rob Brydon, Stephen Merchant, and Bill Bailey. Even Bruce Forsyth put in an appearance. They all heaped praise on him, and deservedly so. After all, it wasn't them he was rude to at a party, was it? And he's jolly funny, or used to be, back in the day. Repeated clips of The Frost Report and The Two Ronnies were testimony to that. His more recent stuff, less so. That Extras sketch is great, of course - "a bit of whiz, you know? To blow away the cobwebs" - but, really, Ronnie, Little Britain? "I was just grateful to be included," was his explanation. And, to be honest, I believe him. This is a man whose raison d'être has been making people laugh; of course, he wants to keep up with the times. Why else would he agree to cuddle a half-naked Lucas in the least funny show on television?

I have no idea how loyal the makers of BBC4's Dirk Gently were to Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, though I'd hazard a guess that a few liberties have been taken. The iPhones and Blackberrys were one giveaway; the various references to East 17 another. And, of course, the book's title has been truncated. Does it matter? Probably, to some of Adams's more devoted fans. In the context of last night's viewing, though, I'm inclined to think that for most of us it doesn't. Not a jot. Gently was so jolly, so rollickingly good natured, that to complain over such trivialities seems terribly poor form.

Gently is a detective. More than that: he is a holistic detective. He believes that everything is interconnected. And so when, on being hired to investigate the disappearance of an old lady's cat, he ran into an old friend from university, he was certain it was a clue. In a way, it was. The pair teamed up, tackling the triple mystery of Henry the cat's whereabouts, the departure of a businessman from a nearby warehouse, and the failing love life of MacDuff (the friend). What followed was a cartoonish series of escapades that saw Dirk prove his creativity, if not sleuthing skills, with his Scooby Doo-esque plans. He faked suicide to steal a set of psychiatric records, he hypnotised MacDuff to take him back in time (not literally, though there is some of that) and he pretended to be a patient at the practice of MacDuff's girlfriend. He found Henry, sort of - and a lot more besides. That nice old lady who hired him, for instance? Not quite as nice as she seemed.

Stephen Mangan - hitherto best known as Guy Secretan from Green Wing - was ideal casting as the hapless Dirk, and Darren Boyd just as perfect as MacDuff. Helen Baxendale, too, made a welcome return as MacDuff's disgruntled girlfriend. In fact, there wasn't very much you could fault about the production at all. Right down to the quirky camerawork and youthful, poppy soundtrack (who would have thought the Hoosiers could be so right in any situation?), the director, Damon Thomas, got it pretty spot-on. The result was a pleasingly festive-feeling adventure; part Wallace & Gromit, part Doctor Who, part The Secret Seven. And the best thing? There wasn't a Christmas tree in sight. Douglas Adams once claimed that Gently would make a better film character than his more famous hero, Arthur Dent. Based on last night's experience, he may well have been right.

There was life before Simon Amstell, though Never Mind the Buzzcocks doesn't seem to know it. A full series after the catty, facetious quiz host left to write and star in Grandma's House, programme-makers are still fumbling around without a replacement.

Instead, they have stuck with a rota of guest-hosts who, if not the most adept at cracking jokes, at least offer punchlines for some. The concept worked last series: Amstell was so strong in his role that a revolving door created a pleasing sense of differentiation. By now, though, they should have settled on their candidate. No longer novel, the post-Amstell gimmick just seems like a compromise. Which, most of the time, it is.

Last night, particularly so. Mark Ronson - a previous contestant on the programme - took centre stage, offering a (fairly) amusing line about his hair (recently peroxided a ghostly white-blond, it boasts, observed one contestant, an uncanny resemblance to the style favoured by Tintin). Aside from the opener, he wasn't up for much. Not his fault; he's not a comedian.

The team captains did rather better: Phill Jupitus is still there, alongside newer arrival Noel Fielding. One of the big successes of the post-Amstell era has been Fielding's recruitment. Not just because he is hilarious - which he is - but also because he brings in some of the funniest guests. The format dictates that each team captain brings a guest to their benches: Fielding, like a naughty child at show-and-tell, produced fellow funnyman Paul Foot who, it transpired, would provide the biggest laughs of the whole thing.

Elsewhere, offerings were rather less lively: rapper Tinie Tempah, Mollie King of The Saturdays and safe-bet Alesha Dixon (she's been here before). No one was made fun of quite as they once were; when they are, the joke remains snugly PR-friendly. The competition rounds are much the same as they ever were; everyone knows what obstacle they'll face. Never Mind the Buzzcocks might be back, but - from the 'slebs' point of view - there's not that much to mind.

Reviving Reggie Perrin wasn't a great idea when it came to the first series. The fact that the BBC has gone in for a second stab is even more mystifying. In truth, if you were a fan of it last year, you probably still will be. Not much has changed: the whiff of My Family, Martin Clunes's perpetually incredulous expression (remind me again why I'm doing this?), the decade-old can of laughter. The question is, was anyone a fan of it last year?

Either way, last night went something like this: our hero, titan of middle management, awoke to realise that flogging male grooming products was not, as it turns out, what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. And so he resigned, very publicly, displaying the sort of flamboyance that would make an internet prankster proud. And then he commenced, briefly, life as a pioneer of self-sufficiency. He drew pictures of a marrow, played with some wood and made his way down to the job centre all by himself. Along the way there was a stint as a shelf-stacker, a bout on the psychotherapist's couch, and the news that Reggie's father was soon to marry his mother-in-law. Meh.

It is quite possible for the entire 30-minute format to zoom by while one sits in a state of permanent bafflement. This, at least, is what happened to me. Chief among my head-scratching topics was the matter of why: why anyone's agents had allowed them to participate? Bird, yes, who made an excellent start on the comedy ladder as a kind of young David Mitchell in The Inbetweeners, but also the contestants.

Last night, we got Peaches Geldof, James Corden and Sarah Beeny, none of whom - last time I checked - were desperate for publicity (aside from Beeny, that is, but then she set up the My Single Friend website, so she's laughing all the way to the bank). So why, one wonders, had they submitted themselves to this? Unlike most make-a-fool-of-the-famous-person shows, it is virtually impossible to come off looking good, even if you, like Corden and Geldof, manage to make the odd good joke. The basic premise was that our celebrity contestants were "applying" for the job of US President. To do so, they had to engage in fights with vending machines, guess lines of movie dialogue and answer awkward questions. Unfortunately, there was not a nail-biting, amusing or revealing moment in it. Given this, perhaps it's not surprising that Beeny, the most boring of the three, won. Surely it can't last.

I'm not even sure it can be described as a comedy: it wasn't even vaguely funny. Jason Manford made a few valiant attempts to shore up the laughter quotient but, on the whole, no luck. The basic premise was that two teams of two (in this instance, regulars Manford and, inexplicably, Peter Andre versus guests Lorraine Kelly and Julian Clary) compete to see who was better able to spot the "odd one in" of four strangers. For instance: who here really is a cockney? Which animal can actually skateboard? Who's not just pretending to hula-hoop? A bit like spotting the odd one out, except the other way around. Clever! Not really: Never Mind the Buzzcocks has been doing this for years, only for them it's a throw-away round, not the basis of the entire programme.