Alison Graham

Radio Times review

Here's a sample gag from Edge of Heaven: "I'm like those birds that go around in pairs." "Lesbians?" "No, swans." If you're laughing so hard you've bent double and displaced a vertebra in your back, then this broad, camp comedy drama is for you.

Just think of it as a low-rent Modern Family set in Edge of Heaven, "Margate's finest 80s-themed B&B", run by raucous landlady Judy (Camille Coduri) and her young husband Tandeep (Nitin Kundra), where she plays host to a ragtag band of eclectic relatives. Her gormless son Alfie (The Inbetweeners' Blake Harrison) is about to marry the girl of his dreams.

Edge of Heaven could have been made at any time during the 1970s. There's even a joke about Blue Nun.

Radio Times review

The first series of these adaptations of PG Wodehouse stories came in for a good kicking from some quarters, which seemed out of proportion considering they were enjoyable bits of candy floss and hardly Broadchurch. But viewers liked them, so here's a second helping, with Timothy Spall once again starring as pin-brained, pig-obsessed toff Lord Emsworth and Jennifer Saunders as his battleaxe of a sister, Connie.

Tim Vine, much missed after his departure from Not Going Out, takes over from Mark Williams as Beach, the clever butler. Harry Enfield guests in the first episode as the claret-nosed Duke of Dunstable, an appalling old buffer with an inexplicable antipathy towards whistling Scotsmen.

Radio Times review

TV action hero Kiefer Sutherland, in London filming a new series of his frenetic drama series 24, gets comfy on the Ross sofa tonight. He probably needs the rest - recent tabloid photos showed him on location running around a block of flats in the capital. After a four-year break the series returns to Sky1 later this year, with Bauer on the run from the CIA.

Also on the show is actress Emily Mortimer, talking about the faintly autobiographical sitcom she's made for Sky Living with best pal Dolly Wells, Doll & Em. And twinkly sex symbol Chris O'Dowd will tell Ross all about his role as a salsa dancer in the Nick Frost comedy film Cuban Fury.

Radio Times review

Ross welcomes two big stars, and Peter Andre. Liam Neeson, Oscar-nominated for Schindler's List, has latterly become an action hero in the two Taken films. He'' been in the headlines recently for his part in a battle to save New York Central Park's horse-drawn carriage industry from being axed by the city's mayor, Bill de Blasio.

Fellow guest Goldie Hawn recently addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos on, of all things, meditation. Meanwhile, Andre, father to a new baby girl, will probably talk about how much he loves his kids, and there's music from Pixie Lott.

Radio Times review

Caroline Quentin doesn't like control pants and wants them dumped in Room 101 as her most hated aspect of the Modern World. You can tell by the reaction of the women in the audience that they feel the same way about being "crammed into Lycra... I've been subjected to these for years."

Meanwhile the tiresomely provocative German comedian Henning Wehn, who has bafflingly been taken to the bosom of Radio Four and both BBC One and BBC Two, judging by the number of times he appears on panel shows, hates anything to do with fundraising. And Michael Ball is fed up with being sent teddy bears by fans: "I've got enough now, I don't need any more."

Radio Times review

Russell Brand almost torpedoed Jonathan Ross's career after the Sachs Incident, and caused convulsions within the BBC that still smart to this day. But the scandal didn't lead to a falling out between the terrible twosome - Brand appeared on Ross's show a year ago and he's back again.

As Brand is never more than a stone's throw from an outraged newspaper headline, he's bound to fulfil expectations as the country's chief Contrarian Comedian, particularly after all of that nonsense about not voting during his Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman. Also on the show are actress Goldie Hawn, Dermot O'Leary, presenter of the National TV Awards (22 January), and troubadour James Blunt, who provides the music.

It's been another winning year for Graham Norton - great guests (his New Year's Eve line-up this year was extraordinary) and great audience figures. Even if you saw every episode of the most recent series these best-bit compilations are always worth a look. So prepare to relive the good and the bad.

The good include Lady Gaga forging an unlikely, instant friendship with EastEnders' Dot Cotton, June Brown; the two Doctors Matt Smith and David Tennant taking fan questions; and Paul McCartney talking about his collaboration with Michael Jackson. And the bad? Michelle Pfeiffer and a very unforthcoming Robert De Niro looking bored and baffled as Cher and Jennifer Saunders stole the show. And Harrison Ford seemingly very unimpressed by Jack Whitehall.

Ah, those were the days, when Christmas specials featured frilly-shirted Sacha Distel and Clodagh Rodgers in a hostess gown singing cheesy songs in front of skinny TV studio Christmas trees. In this 1973 special these musical interludes break up Tommy Cooper's comedy business of pratfalls and carefully choreographed ineptitude, and some terrible sketches - one involving a game of billiards played with a golf club feels like it goes on for ten years.

But there's a certain piquancy to all of this, as David Threlfall will shortly play Cooper in an ITV bio-drama. Cooper and his comedy have developed a patina of affectionate cool in the years since his death, so it's the perfect chance to see why he endures.

There are very few British sitcoms more beloved than Open All Hours, a slice of comic northern life as comforting as warm Yorkshire parkin.

Of course Ronnie Barker, who added grumpy, low-level-swindling shopkeeper Albert Arkwright to his portmanteau of great comedy characters, is no longer with us. But David Jason, his put-upon nephew and protégé Granville, has become an all-conquering TV star in the years since Open All Hours ended in 1985 and he returns to that little corner shop as its new owner.

He's helped by his son Leroy (Emmerdale's James Baxter), the result of a one-night stand 25 years ago - a handsome, ambitious lad who fights off female attention very much as Granville used to back in the old days.

This special episode, written by Open All Hours creator Roy Clarke, takes us back to the shop for a day, and reintroduces us to some familiar faces.

Lee, Lucy and Daisy spend Christmas in a ramshackle, remote country house once owned by Lee's now-dead aunt. But it's a creepy place - a chair rocks by itself, there's strange music, a locked cellar door and a legend involving an unhappy boy.

Anyone who enjoys Not Going Out's quickfire, you-can-see-them-coming gags and its soft-centred smut will be in heaven. It's hard to resist such a straightforward, coarsely old-fashioned sitcom and Lee Mack's immaculate comic timing, despite or possibly even because of the scatalogical gags. Though everything is assiduously telegraphed, just give yourself up to a bit of ribald fun, one that stars the fabulous Geoffrey Whitehead as Lucy's magnificently austere dad.