Alison Graham

As the second episode of this tart little anti-comedy begins, inept doctor Pippa (Vicki Pepperdine) is lost in a pod of isolation. Her husband has left her and her precious female genitalia project is in jeopardy.

Poor, emotionally illiterate Pippa; she is dismissive of everyone while being hollow with loneliness. Her colleagues Den and Kim (Joanna Scanlan and Jo Brand) laugh behind her back as they try to kick holes in the thick walls of NHS bureaucracy. For Den, this means changing her plans now she knows that pregnant staff members are entitled to a free fridge for expressed breast milk.

Getting On is a tiny triumph, a mournful, relentlessly downbeat sitcom that isn't actually funny but somehow makes you laugh even while you're pummelled by its bleak portrait of the NHS.

Its three writers and stars - Vicki Pepperdine, the Bafta-winning Jo Brand, and Joanna Scanlan - return to a new ward and a new health trust in the third series. But nothing much has changed.

Dr Pippa Moore (Pepperdine) is painfully self-obsessed and lacking in empathy ("I've had a mini-break to celebrate my decree nisi"), nurse Kim (Brand) cares but is buried by a landslide of political correctness, while sister Den (Scanlan) tries to keep her head above the jargon.

At times it seems that everyone talks but no one listens, and there are some comically excruciating scenes involving the clipped and hopeless Pippa as she tries to discuss her female genitalia project.

Dotty grandma arrives for dinner with her terrible new boyfriend, or "male companion" as she prefers. He's a mean-spirited old man who arrives by crashing his car into the Goodmans' front door before berating the household. Again, it's an episode that relies heavily on farce and eye-popping outrage, so it wears thin quite quickly. But Harry Landis, as the boyfriend, is gloriously awful, whether he's engaging in excruciating displays of affection with grandma ("I'm all randy") to claiming he's been abused by the entirely innocent Adam (Simon Bird). And there's a welcome, though all too brief, visit from febrile neighbour Jim (Mark Heap).

"There goes a tiebreaker in the making: who was Nicola Murray?" says a wag. Poor Nicola (Rebecca Front), her every move dogged by a man dressed as a pork chop, finds herself the target of a torpedo of invective from Malcolm Tucker.

Even for Tucker, this is strong stuff: "You've all the charm of a rotting teddybear by a graveside... you headless frump" is one of the milder insults in a firestorm of abuse as he throws Nicola out of what used to be her office in front of her successor, that suave Dalek Dan Miller.

It's a messy episode that tips into pandemonium when a leaked email sets off a chain reaction.

It's back and Friday nights make sense again. Nothing starts the weekend in quite the same way as this half-hour dollop of headline-based sarcasm, joyful meanness and unashamed unpleasantness. It's the best way to unpack the accumulated stresses of a working week. Some of the guests might occasionally be dull, like those terrified politicians who try too, too hard to be funny, but what the heck, team captains Paul Merton and Ian Hislop have seen it all before and the pace never flags.

Making her debut as host is Clare Balding, newly anointed National Treasure after stints commentating on the Olympics and the Paralympics won her a devoted following.

We sit down at the dinner table with the chaotic Goodman family as Robert Popper's genial autobiographical comedy returns for a second series. Dad, the fantastically lugubrious Paul Ritter, is once again embarrassingly shirtless ("I'm bloody boiling" is his constant lament) as warring siblings Adam and Jonny (Simon Bird and Tom Rosenthal) start brawling like toddlers the minute they set foot in their childhood home. Mum Jackie (Tamsin Greig) can do little except look pained while shouting for order above the mayhem.

Mark Heap as weirdly obtuse neighbour Jim lifts us out of broad farce when he becomes obsessed by Adam's childhood fluffy bunny.

You can't go wrong with writer, tweeter and boulevardier Stephen Fry, he's the perfect chat show guest: witty, charming and impossible to faze. He has something to celebrate, too, a triumphant return to the theatre after that dark time in 1995 when, crippled by stage fright, he fled Simon Gray's West End production of Cell Mates. Fry is currently starring as Malvolio, opposite Mark Rylance, in the Globe theatre's production of Twelfth Night.

Sharing the limelight on the Ross couch tonight is dainty songstress Taylor Swift, who will doubtless be singing her new single, Begin Again, and who might even be persuaded to talk about her boyfriend Conor Kennedy of the US political clan.

Kenny Everett was a man who always knew when to go too far. He was also an acquired taste; a thoroughly tiresome attention-seeker or a comedy genius, depending on your viewpoint.

This tender, ebullient biopic, featuring a tour de force from Oliver Lansley as Everett, charts an eccentric life, from Everett's early years as a DJ on the pirate station Radio London, to his complicated relationship with
the BBC. But its focus is the unconventional marriage of Everett, a guilt-ridden, closet gay, and his wife Lee (the brilliant Katherine Kelly).

Everett was hard work - needy, annoying and forever hiding behind silly voices and pantomime TV characters such as Sid Snot and Cupid Stunt, who are all played by Lansley, popping up to provide an off-kilter narration. Lansley is sensational: eye-popping, mugging and infuriating one minute, petulant and bereft the next. Best Possible Taste could slip into tears-of-a-clown cliché but, somehow, it doesn't.

There are no words to describe Dynamo, the street magician from Bradford. Just watch footage of him apparently walking across the Thames. It can't be possible. Yet there he is, making his way towards the Houses of Parliament, in front of hordes of onlookers. His show Magician Impossible is a hit for digital channel Watch so here's hoping the self-effacing Dynamo (aka Steven Frayne) makes the most of a terrestrial audience by having fun with Ross.

Also on the guest bill are comedian Jack Dee, back on the road after a six-year hiatus, and Harry Potter's Emily Watson. Gwen Stefani gets together with old mates No Doubt to provide the music.

Now that the nights are drawing in, there's nothing like a bit of topical comedy delivered by a stand-up comedian with a skewed West Country charm to warm up a chilly heart.

Certainly BBC3 will be rubbing its hands at the return of Russell Howard's Good News, the channel's most successful entertainment series that's also regularly the most watched show across all BBC channels on iPlayer.

The seventh series will follow the format of the previous six, though we hope without any accidents - Howard broke a finger on stage in front of his audience while pretending to be a stuntman in an episode last year, soldiering on in agony until he was taken to hospital.

The meat of the show is provided by his observations on news stories taken from TV news channels and newspapers domestically and around the world, all assiduously gathered by Howard and his writing team. Viewers can send in their suggestions via Twitter at @bbcgoodnews.