Alison Graham

Tousled, cheeky Russell Howard bounces back onto BBC3 for a new series of his silly, funny, topical comedy show. Such is the channel's delight in their young star, for the first time he's been given a proper, grown-up prime time slot and a longer run.

Howard describes Good News as "really good disposable telly. You can watch it while you are ironing." It's energetic and it's a laugh; a look at the week's news stories, the big stuff and the nonsense, those endearingly parochial stories that pad out nightly regional news programmes and local papers, unearthed by Good News's researchers who, he says, "find those characters we have all seen. They are normally smiling and holding a massive turnip."

The Matt Lucas Awards are the television version of Lucas's Radio 2 show, And The Winner Is..., a reverse Room 101 where guests offer nominations for the host's consideration and, they hope, approbation.

It's a strange, muddled thing that isn't sure what it wants to be. A panel show? Or perhaps a sitcom of sorts? Lucas is indefatigable as he tries to keep everything together and at least give the show some kind of order. His mum Diana is in the "kitchen" of the set, a mocked-up version of Lucas's flat, but she has very little to do, which is a shame as she's charming and sweet.

Guests Graeme Garden (who is particularly game, though he mostly looks uncomfortable), Jason Manford (inevitably) and that strange habitué of Radio 4 shows, the simply baffling Henning Wehn present Lucas with their ideas for "smuggest nation of people". Thus Manford rails against Sweden and, yes, Ikea. The best bits involve musician and laconic wit David Arnold, Lucas's house one-man band.

The Olympic Deliverance Committee, a bunch of people who do an awful lot of talking yet somehow never manage to say anything. Take half-witted PR flack (sorry, Head of Brand) Siobhan (superb Jessica Hynes), whose contributions to meetings begin and end with "I'm totally good with that" and who thinks Canterbury (as in the Archbishop of) is in Sussex.

As the row over the faith centre escalates, there are discussions about whether the Olympic Village laundry centre could be converted into a mosque to appease the Algerian team. Siobhan and Ian Fletcher (the great Hugh Bonneville) have a painfully funny on-site meeting with an exasperated architect at the end of his tether. It's another layer of tortuous bureaucracy as everyone strives for a "beacon of inclusiveness".

Ed Reardon - celebrated creator of an episode of Tenko, ghostwriter for z-list celebrities and, sometimes, their pets - is back, and this time he's happy. So happy, in fact, that his facial muscles have difficulty in adjusting to this new emotional experience.

Reardon fans, who include RT's very own Alison Graham and Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman, need not fear that his inner rage at the injustices of modern life or, more specifically, his life has been dampened. He begins by railing against the happy young women they place on the front of broadsheet newspapers who have just passed their GCSEs with flying colours. Why can't they show abject failures, he wants to know? And why does even the sport section of said papers have to contain a wry look at the world by David Mitchell? Why not just give him his own damn section and have done with it?

Life has certainly improved for Ed since he took up with 1960s model Fiona (played by Jenny Agutter) - she's going to fly him on an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris - but can this spate of happiness last? No, of course not. An attempt to get his passport renewed ends in the squalid disaster we have come to expect from genius writers Andrew Nickolds and Christopher Middleton. Who'd have thought a company called Merkury Kouriers could invoke such disdain?

The first series, on BBC4, initially felt like a thin, sub-The Office comedy of embarrassment. But after a couple of repeat runs it emerged as something rather warm, and perky enough to transfer to BBC2.

Everyone on the hapless, chaotic Olympic Deliverance Committee, headed by the well-meaning but inept Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville, who, like the rest of the cast, downplays brilliantly), is still mired in doublespeak. But the Games are looming and the Algerians are threatening a boycott because the "Shared Belief Centre" doesn't face Mecca. Worse, there's a problem with the hand dryers.

And Ian's faithful secretary, "Not a problem" Sally (that comedy marvel Olivia Colman), is still hopelessly, wordlessly, in love with him. But iron enters Sally's soul when she spots a rival.

Here's a bold idea; get Sarah Millican to take over Harry Hill's now-vacant chair on TV Burp. She'd be perfect, she can see all that is both fun and ridiculous about television and she's quick on her comedy feet. Though of course she'd have to tone down the saucy bits. In between a routine about her abandoned sex toys (Sex Toy Story 4) she gets her own back after being patronised by fashion designer Julien Macdonald of Britain's Next Top Model and grills a very game Robert Peston about his domestic austerity measures.

It's hard to believe that a whole ten years ago Harry Hill's TV Burp was a guerilla comedy show; a surreal late-night frolic fronted by the inimitable comedian. In those days the BBC didn't let him use clips of EastEnders, which led to a memorably hilarious bit of "undercover" filming as Hill turned up at BBC Television Centre with a tin of ham and a Twix for the then director-general, Greg Dyke. Oddly, Dyke wouldn't see him.

Then, suddenly, Burp was catapulted into the mainstream with a peak-time Saturday-night slot and everyone wanted to join in the fun as Hill lampooned terrible telly. Even the BBC loosened its grasp on those EastEnders snippets. Tonight, we reach the end with Hill's last TV Burp. The show might continue with another host but for those of us who have loved it from the start, that would be unthinkable and pointless. Because it's all about Harry.

John Prescott was once so rude to me when I was a reporter on a local newspaper that, even 25 years later, I can still hear him screaming. He will definitely go into my Room 101.

Lord Prescott, as he is now, of course, wants to dispose of gurning press pictures of himself that make him look stupid, and footballers' silly goal-celebration dances. Oh, and the title "Lord".

Rebecca Front doubtless speaks for good-mannered people across the land when she says she would banish other people's music (leaky headphones, cab drivers playing power-ballad music stations), while Micky Flanagan can't stand celebrity chefs and Americanisms.

Bleak Old Shop is surely too silly to be borne, yet it comes up with some great gags. Tonight, a bereaved Jedrington Secret-Past cannot demonstrate his grief because it's illegal for men to show emotion. So he is given a seedy solution that is both stupid and very funny.

As for the dead-through-shame Conceptiva, she is an unwitting subject for an opportunist Pre-Raphaelite painter and later ekes out a living pretending to talk cockney to perverts (Men get off on her dropped aitches).

But the undoubted Sight of the Week is the splendid Tim McInnerny dressed as a rabbit, subverting A Christmas Carol as the Ghost of Easter, with horrific visions of a future without "Massive Tim".

It would be so easy to shoot this sketch show by a couple of relatively unknown comedians, Lorna Watson and Ingrid Oliver, right out of the water. I could say that on the whole it's pretty poor, with a few thin laughs in a clutch of woefully under-written sketches. I could say that Watson & Oliver must have known it was in trouble when it gave a substantial guest spot here to John Barrowman playing a preening, narcissistic version of himself.

I could add that with a lot more work Watson & Oliver might find themselves a niche on television after a successful live-performance career. I could say all of these things. But I won't.