Alison Graham

The sainted Delia Smith takes her place on the sofa tonight, just one ingredient in a rich mixture of guests. The Hollywood shimmer comes from Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton, who'll be talking about their new film, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.

Matt Lucas, now a bit of a film star after his turn in the hit Bridesmaids, is in comedy corner, where doubtless he'll want to talk about the return of his BBC1 series, The Matt Lucas Awards. Rita Ora is the musical guest.

It's the Blandings fête, the Emsworth family's most important day of the year, according to battleaxe Constance (Jennifer Saunders).

Of course the event will be ruined because idiot Freddie is giving an unsuitable speech in the big tent and there are a pair of grubby urchins roaming the grounds of Blandings, intent on mischief. They are a couple of "London Fresh Air Children" who, Constance tells her brother Lord Emsworth, "are here to see civilised people comporting themselves properly". But Emsworth, for once, refuses to be cowed either by his sister or his incomprehensible, gravel-obsessed gardener.

Singer Paloma Faith guest-stars as Georgia, a grating cockney showgirl brought to Blandings by cockscomb-haired idiot Freddie. Georgia takes an instant shine to clenched butler Beach, who's terrified.

Guy Andrews's adaptations of PG Wodehouse's stories have come in for flak from some viewers for being empty piffle, shorn of Wodehouse's wit. They have a point, and it's hard to see who the stories are aimed at. Still, Blandings fills a need for a bit of nonsense on a Sunday afternoon, where it's won audiences of more than five million. So there are many people who will doubtless enjoy David Walliams's return as fussy secretary Baxter.

Russell Brand is so unpredictable, he's talk-show Semtex. Probably more famous for who he marries/divorces/dates than his movie career, he's on Ross's sofa tonight, with comedian and marathon man Eddie Izzard, who's starting a stand-up tour later this year, national treasure Sir David Attenborough, movie hulk Dolph Lundgren and, providing the music, those common people, Pulp.

Fabulous Helen Mirren takes her place on the Norton sofa tonight to talk up her new film, Hitchcock. She's been nominated for a Bafta for her role as the director's long-suffering wife, Alma Reville, opposite Anthony Hopkins as the Master of Suspense.

Mirren is teetering dangerously close to becoming, like her fellow Dame, Judi Dench, a national treasure - she's funny, never appears to take herself too seriously and is a super-fantastic actress who played the best EVER television detective, Jane Tennison in all of those Prime Suspects.

Keeping her company is the underrated, hugely brilliant comic actor Paul Rudd, who can make any ropey old movie (have you seen The Object of My Affection?) seem not so bad after all. He's in London promoting his new film, This Is 40, Judd Apatow's sequel to Knocked Up.

Radio Times review

Ross welcomes two Australians into his green room. Rose Byrne came to most people's notice as the heroine of TV thriller Damages, then shot to another level of fame in Bridesmaids. Given how pretty and talented she is, expect Ross to get a little overheated. The host of Channel 4's late-night talk show, Adam Hills, is also around.

David Walliams guest-stars as Baxter, a pernickety secretary brought in by the formidable Aunt Constance to clear up the mess of her halfwitted brother Lord Emsworth (Timothy Spall).

He starts by re-classifying his boss's marbles collection. "I promise you, I will regularise your brother," he announces before attacking the hapless Emsworth's paperwork with terrifying zeal. It's another sweetly funny episode in Guy Andrews's adaptations of the PG Wodehouse stories. Just think of it as The Idiot Downton Abbey, where absurd toffs get into muddles, usually with pigs and women.

Emsworth's impecunious rooster-haired buffoon of a son, Freddie (smashing Jack Farthing), has once again lost his allowance, this time in a doomed wager with fellow Drones Club member Catsmeat Potter Pirbright. After eating dog biscuits to impress a girl, Freddie decides to make his fortune selling canine nibbles. Biffing!

It's 24 years since Yes, Prime Minister was last on our screens but, along with Fawlty Towers, it's probably the most fondly remembered of all British sitcoms. Doubtless fans will come to this updating by original writers Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay carrying big bags of goodwill. But political satire has changed in those intervening years, everyone's a critic and politicians are routinely savaged on social networking sites. And we've had The Thick of It, which attacked government and opposition with equal comic ferocity.

So all of this makes Yes, Prime Minister seem the most gentle and polite of comedies. There are no hard edges, just knowing winks and gags about Greek bail-outs. Its good manners feel dated, but luckily it is saved by the peerless David Haig and Henry Goodman as hapless PM Jim Hacker and suave cabinet secretary Sir Humphrey.

Until the last syllable of recorded time, there will ALWAYS be something funny about watching camcorder footage of people falling off garden trampolines. There's one at the end of this Animal Antics that doesn't involve an animal, and it's a piece of pure visual and hubristic poetry.

Elsewhere in a daft pretend news bulletin presented by "anchor" Tim Brooke-Taylor and Sparky the dog (comedian Matthew Crosby) you can rejoice in a baton-twirling bear, dogs sitting like humans on sofas, a dancing poodle and, best of all, a man being attacked by a very angry and persistent goose. Oh, and there's a lot of film of cats doing silly things.

Stanley Baxter was a gifted mimic whose lavish shows were legends of opulence. During the 1970s and 80s Christmas wasn't complete without Baxter dressed as a woman to play anyone from Zsa Zsa Gabor to Mrs Bridges from Upstairs, Downstairs, or an entire Busby Berkeley dance troupe.

In this fond tribute Baxter himself (looking very good for 86) talks us through his career, from early days on stage in Glasgow to his heyday at LWT, where his indulgent boss Michael Grade wrote the cheques. Baxter was brilliant but his shows, apart from becoming too expensive for TV, had an in-built obsolescence and dated immediately.