Alison Graham

There's a funeral in Portwenn that leaves Dr Martin Ellingham (Martin Clunes) both solemn and grumpy, a devastating combination. After ticking off the funeral director for arriving eight minutes late with the coffin, he then berates the congregation during what is supposed to be his eulogy: "A good percentage of the people in this church are clinically obese."

Just to add to the chaos, a pallid young pallbearer, the son of the undertaker, collapses in pain (dropping the coffin in the process, of course). Luckily, sanity of a sort comes with the arrival of Martin's formidable, clipped and rather splendid Auntie Ruth (Eileen Atkins, a welcome addition). She's just as much of a no-nonsense type as her nephew, telling Louisa: "I either alienate or over-share."

So Doc Martin obviously still hasn't left for his new job in London and moves back, supposedly temporarily, into the old surgery. It looks like he's going to hang around for the time being. But you've probably already guessed that, haven't you?

Tonight's line-up of guests is terrific: the ridiculously hunky Hugh Jackman, the sainted Stephen Fry and the peerless Peter Kay. So make the most of them, Jonathan, get them all out at once, chatting together on the sofa.

That's what makes Graham Norton's show such fun; rather than having painful or strained little individual interviews, he just flings the guests together and watches as something wonderful emerges. Come on, who wants to see Fry flirt with Jackman? I do, I do.

Jackman, an action hero and a highly accomplished song-and-dance man, is in town to plug his new film, Real Steel, a shiny, butch-looking thing about boxing and robots. Fry is on the show just to be himself while Kay, whose staggeringly successful comedy career spawned a similarly staggeringly successful brace of jokey autobiographies, is here to talk about his new book.

The charmless, socially inept, emotionally disconnected, rude and unpleasant Dr Martin Ellingham (Martin Clunes) returns as a new dad for a fifth series of this much-loved chunk of escapism.

His dim schoolteacher lover Louisa Glasson (Caroline Catz) has just given birth to a baby boy (we pick up exactly where we left off at the end of the previous series in 2009), temporarily halting the Doc's escape to a new job in London. Cradling the mite as if it's a missile that could go off at any moment, Martin finds he can't let go of Portwenn and his old job, particularly as his replacement, Dr Dibbs (The Thick of It's Joanna Scanlan) is nervous and her overbearing husband (Robert Dawes) is insufferable.

I suppose part of Doc Martin's charm is its predictability, so you'll be able to see exactly where all this is heading, as the episode, eschewing all the rules of drama (a plot, an engaging lead character), potters along in the Cornish sunshine.

Fish and chips, the weather, accents and local rivalries are all part of Being British, the theme for the final John Bishop's Britain. These are well-trodden comedy paths, but they're given a new flourish with a smattering of funny stories. Like Bishop's tale of how he auditioned for a car commercial voice-over, and the apoplectic reaction of the producer to his Scouse pronunciation of Vorsprung durch Technik.

He also lets us in to some of the horrors of life as a stand-up comedian, including telling his kids off over the phone, and the perils of facing unforgiving Northern audiences. And again, there are minor joys among the vignettes featuring members of the public. The fantastically languid Fletcher, a "model from Dalston" is my favourite.

If you have never seen Monty Python's parrot sketch, or are unfamiliar with Eric Morecambe's demolition of "Andrew Preview" ("I am playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order"), then this is for you. Ronnie Corbett's Comedy Britain is a handy primer for anyone who needs to work on their history of British comedy. For everyone else, it's an easy-going, if sometimes uncomfortably loose, hour of very familiar comedians talking about comedy. As Corbett is beloved of the new wave of Brit-coms - he had cameos in Extras, where he snorted cocaine from a toilet seat, and Little Britain, where he was confronted by the grotesque Bubbles DeVere - his pals are modish. So he has an odd little interlude with Miranda Hart, whom he accompanies to the Fairfield Halls in Croydon, spiritual home of Hart's beloved Morecambe and Wise. Then Corbett has lunch with Stephen Merchant, a picnic on a punt with David Mitchell and afternoon tea with John Cleese. And with Matt Lucas he tries to be Vicky Pollard, and is terrible.

I try hard to resist John Bishop; he's loud, brash, coarse and crude. But, dammit, he always gets me in the end. I don't want to laugh, but, yes, there I go. He's good at cheery observation - a dirty version of Michael McIntyre with jokes invariably ending up somewhere below the waist. Like his final, elaborate gag that centres on an involuntary male physical reaction to an extended kissing scene when he starred in Skins. His leery stand-up routine is mixed with filmed contributions from members of the public and minor celebrities, who expound on topics, including this week Awful Music and Guilty Pleasures. Bishop, at his most laconic, does an excellent hatchet-job on U2's Bono at his most sanctimonious and there are extended routines about that old chestnut, men dancing at weddings, and the joys of taping music from the radio as a kid.

After ten minutes of this gormless show you'll feel as if you're caught up in a dreadful theme-park ride that hurls you through dank tunnels of cliché. You will be left queasy by the sweetly sickly premise: a small northern town's fight to save its rock factory, and by its warm-hearted northern stereotypes. In short, Sugartown makes Candy Cabs look like The Sopranos. As for the plot - you've seen it before. A northern lad made good in the south (Tom Ellis) returns to his smalltown home ("Have I come up north or back in time?" Ho ho ho) to open a casino that will destroy everything Sugartown stands for. His brother, a nice chap who is about to get wed (Shaun Dooley, of course) owns the rock factory, which is in financial trouble. By the time you get this far, you will have lost the will to live.

Radio Times review

I love black comedies. The bleaker and the more tasteless, the better. The Thick of It, Pulling, Getting On, Nurse Jackie. So Sirens, a "comedy drama" based on real-life paramedic Tom Reynolds's blog, looked alluring. Bring on the gallows humour!

It turns out to be a queasy mixture of sentimentality and sexism, spattered with the kind of knuckle-dragging gags last seen in Confessions of a Window Cleaner.

Example: a sexy gas-meter reader has to reach for her ID, which just happens to be tucked in her inside pocket, right near her ample, exposed cleavage. Come on, that kind of thing was dated in 1973.

I have no idea who Sirens, which follows three young male paramedics, is aimed at. Definitely not teens; they don't have the patience. Young men? Maybe; there are gags about erections and masturbation, and the weariest, most aged visual "joke" about a certain sex act that is so spent it's a museum piece.

But then maybe it's aimed at old men. Or tree frogs. Or Pekinese dogs. Who knows? But it should be better. It should be funnier. It should be sharper. It's unforgivable.

On our letters page recently an RT reader quite rightly praised Bafta-winning Norton as "a breath of fresh air" on Friday nights. Norton is a great host and the show has become a joyful way to round off the week. He's warm and inclusive, and a smashing interviewer who doesn't fawn (though he teetered close to the edge of unctuousness with Lady Gaga a few weeks back). So enjoy the feeling of being at a pleasant gathering with a thoughtful host. Tonight's guests are Kim Cattrall, glowing with her London stage success in Private Lives and soon to star in it on Broadway, and British Soap Awards winner Jessie Wallace. The Saturdays provide the music.

In the unforgettable words of the Eagles, this could be heaven, or this could be hell; a Saturday night variety show that promises to "make stars of the audience". But wait! Lee Mack, a gifted, thinkson- his-feet stand-up and the funniest man on TV, is master of this particular carnival, and he's as far away from any egregious Mr Variety as you can get. The show is recorded just days before transmission, so it's still an unknown quantity, though a very brief taster tape from the pilot episode provides some clues, notably that Mack is the best thing about All Star Cast. He holds everything together brilliantly, even if it is a curious mixture of celebrity interviews (conducted by Mack), music, stand-up and comedy sketches with guests, which are notoriously difficult to get right. There's also a weird little interlude called "Famous for Fifteen Seconds", where members of the viewing public are invited to show us their party piece. In the pilot, it's a cheerful man from Gloucester who sings Summer Holiday backwards. Yes, really.