Alison Graham

Radio Times review

There's something so delightfully mischievous about No Offence, a hybrid of creator Paul Abbott's Shameless and Tony Garnett's gritty The Cops. It knows it's rude and unruly, but it just doesn't care.

As the hunt for the serial killer of women with Down's syndrome chugs along in the background, DI Viv Deering's tumultuous team of detectives, including Will Mellor as the keen DC Spike Tanner, is investigating the murder of a young Asian woman. She's been killed in an arson attack, and suspicion falls squarely on a group of vociferous, shaven-headed racists.

The subject matter is touchy (and becomes increasingly so as the plot bends), but episode writer Paul Tomalin resolutely doesn't bury us in cliché, turning the story on its head while encouraging us to laugh at the stag-night antics of a particularly gormless fascist buffoon.

We're also given a peek into Viv's (Joanna Scanlan) home life, which provides at least one of the episode's surprises.

Radio Times review

Simon Pegg, who went from hopeless, endearing sci-fi nerd Tim in the brilliant Channel 4 cult comedy Spaced to Hollywood megastar after Shaun of the Dead and Star Trek, takes his seat on the red sofa.

He will talk about his new romcom, Man Up, in which he stars with American actress Lake Bell as a mismatched couple who meet, in a case of mistaken identity, on a blind date.

In the comedy corner is Michael McIntyre at the start of his Happy and Glorious national tour, and you'd better smile like you mean it, because the Killers' frontman Brandon Flowers performs his solo single, I Can Change.

Radio Times review

Ian Fletcher, the BBC's head of values, knows how to set aflame the hearts of his female colleagues. In Twenty Twelve, as head of Olympic deliverance, he was the object of his secretary Sally's silent devotion.

Now he's taken the fancy of brutal Anna Rampton (Sarah Parish) and personable, sensible Lucy Freeman. Both women cast covetous glances at the hapless chap in the final episode of John Morton's knowing sitcom.

Ian's (Hugh Bonneville) well disposed to Lucy (Nina Sosanya) but there's little time for romance when a perfect storm of nonsense involving a BBC London weather man and a female presenter blows up and threatens to engulf the management team. It's all Siobhan's fault, of course.

Radio Times review

Never play a practical joke on the fearsome Detective Inspector Vivienne Deering (brilliant Joanna Scanlan) because you will rue the day. Just watch as she almost takes flight from a massage table when she and her young oppo Dinah Kowalska have a spa day. Kowalska, who speaks fluent Polish, has a little word with a masseuse, just for a laugh. The results are hilarious and a tiny bit frightening.

This is a necessary bit of pampering as the two women take a short break from their hunt for the serial killer of Down's syndrome women. There are other problems on their raw Manchester neighbourhood, too - young men are turning up dead, as the result of a bad batch of drugs, currently being manufactured in a respectable-looking suburban semi.

Everything is done at a breathless pace, but it's worth taking a little time to appreciate the great Paul Ritter as a clever cop.

Radio Times review

PR wonk Siobhan Sharpe is in full, incomprehensible, short-circuiting robot mode as the management team discuss the launch of BBC Better: "You might want to buy into, like, the idea of major s***. We've got to pre-sell the movie rights."

It's a brilliant set piece of double-think, in an organisation where W1A writer John Morton suggests that people shall speak nonsense to other people. No one does it better than Sharpe (Jessica Hynes) and dear, dim intern Will "Yeah, sure, yeah, cool" Humphries (Hugh Skinner, a hoot), who wanders the floors of New Broadcasting House looking like a puzzled horse.

Meanwhile, Anna Rampton, the new Head of Better, doesn't want a picture of Lord Reith in her new office because he's "too frightening".

Radio Times review

There's a star turn from Reece Shearsmith as a demented fishmonger who cadges a lift to work with John and Kayleigh as this curious little observational comedy trundles along.

Shearsmith plays Ray, a colleague of the pair at the superstore but no one wants anything to do with him because he reeks of fish. In any event Kayleigh isn't at her best after a drunken night at a friend's farewell party where she drank a few too many "cheeky Vimtos", which, she tells John, "are all the rage in Basra".

There are signs that John (Peter Kay, who co-wrote and directed) is growing quite keen on his car-sharer, and the pair are developing a sweet and funny relationship forged to the cheesy hits of "Forever FM".

Radio Times review

A great cast - Vincent Franklin from Cucumber, Hugh Skinner (dumb Will in W1A), and Rufus Jones (camp David, also in W1A) do their best in this queasy sitcom about drone pilots.

The bored little group are closeted in a cabin on a bleak airfield, their days characterised by long stretches of yawning boredom punctuated by administering sudden death in the Middle East, and sometimes they get it wrong.

It's a black comedy (there's a very off-colour gag about social services) but it's not black enough and consequently not funny enough. It's the kind of thing Charlie Brooker would do ruthlessly well, yet writer Guy Jenkin (Ballot Monkeys and Drop the Dead Donkey) lets it drift into farce.

Radio Times review

There's a breathless and brutal opening to this coarse, crude, rude, often very funny Paul Abbott comedy drama as a young detective, Dinah Kowalska, chases a suspect through the streets of Manchester.

Kowalska (Elaine Cassidy) is a highly capable woman who's in with a shot at making detective sergeant. But her terrifying boss Detective Inspector Vivienne Deering (the magnificent Joanna Scanlan, from The Thick of It and Getting On) wants a little word with her first.

Abbott is a past master at creating brilliantly well-rounded, realistic women characters (Shameless, State of Play) and Deering, who is eye-wateringly forthright (truly, No Offence is not for the faint-hearted) is particularly vivid. And, in the noble tradition of TV cops, she has no truck with authority - her jobsworth boss is the very suave Colin Salmon - as she hunts a serial killer targeting women with Down's syndrome.

Radio Times review

The perils of a car-sharing scheme and the enforced companionship of strangers is at the core of Peter Kay's new comedy series (which debuted on BBC iPlayer).

Kay, who co-wrote and directed, is John, a drone at a huge DIY store who volunteers to drive a colleague to and from work. She's Kayleigh (Sian Gibson) a voluble, nosey, over-sharing woman with a love for Forever FM and its non-stop diet of cheesy 1980s pop hits.

It's a gentle observational comedy, rather than a laugh-riot, and actually it's not particularly funny. But there are occasional sparks of Kay-ness, little throw-away lines that recall the halcyon days of Phoenix Nights, and Gibson is great, her remorseless cheerfulness hiding a lonely core. We can see where it's all leading, but it's an amiable journey.

Radio Times review

Food writer Damien Trench's partner Anthony thinks they should get a lodger. But prissy Damien (Miles Jupp, who also writes In and Out of the Kitchen) is anxious about toilet arrangements, among other things: "A lodger would be an imposition, they'd upset my rhythm, my domestic ebb and flow."

It's the final episode in a very brief (three-episode) adaptation of the Radio 4 original, and though In and Out will never set the world on fire, it's sweetly funny and occasionally barbed, if a bit underpowered. And there's too much of Damien's needy literary agent. But when it's just Damien and Anthony squabbling at home about laundry or the builders, it's a wee gem.