Alison Graham

Now here's a treat for an Easter Monday night; just as you look back fondly on the four-day bank holiday weekend and look forward not too fondly to returning to work tomorrow, Channel 4 have taken it upon themselves to cheer you up. They've skimmed the cream of comedy talent for a gala night dedicated to making us laugh, while raising funds for the Great Ormond Street Hospital's Children's Charity. The night will fund two new anaesthetic rooms, allowing parents to stay with their children right up until they enter the operating theatre. Make sure you watch tomorrow's brilliant documentary, Great Ormond Street (9pm BBC2), to get some idea of the astonishing work done at the hospital. The cast of comics is a glittering one: David Mitchell, Bill Bailey, Catherine Tate, Jack Dee, James Corden, Jo Brand, Jonathan Ross and many, many others will perform stand-up routines in front of a capacity crowd at the massive O2 Arena in London. As a nice little bonus, Robert Webb, Ricky Gervais, Derren Brown and Johnny Depp, who can't be there in person, have filmed comic sketches especially for the night.

Audiences for Tina Fey's comedy series 30 Rock are so tiny, both in its native America and over here where it's shown on Comedy Central, that they are barely visible to the naked eye. Yet critical acclaim has been so overwhelming and the awards so numerous (it's won Golden Globes and Emmys) that Fey, 30 Rock's creator, writer and lead actor, is now a huge star with a Hollywood film career. Her latest movie, Date Night starring The (US) Office's Steve Carell, is out in Britain shortly. She also became so notorious for her deadly impressions of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live ("I can see Russia from my house!") that she was widely credited with torpedoing Palin's vice-presidential hopes. Fey's a bright, witty woman who sparkles in interviews so Ross won't have to work too hard tonight. Sharing sofa-space with Fey are the chef with the Bunsen burner, Heston Blumenthal, and actor Aaron Johnson, who played John Lennon in the Brit-flick Nowhere Boy. Groove Armada featuring Will Young provide the music.

Struggling with bereavement, a sad and restless Eddie (the excellent Shaun Dooley, who's made MSO worthwhile) says at one point, "It's funny how death makes you feel really alive." Which might lead you, dear viewer, to think, oh lord, what next? "Absence makes the heart grow fonder"? But then, everyone in Married Single Other talks in clichés and the wispy plot is buttressed by indie ballads, a convenient shorthand for slapping the viewer across the face and saying, "Listen! This is a sad bit." Tonight we have Because by I Am Kloot (no, I haven't heard of it or them, either), as everyone looks bereft. All the relationships are, in one way or another, on the rocks, yet the ending (this is the last episode of the series) holds out the hope that everything will be all right really.

Even for Married Single Other, a drama that has fondant icing where its dialogue should be, some of this week's lines are so sickly you might need to have a bucket handy. Lillie and Eddie's wedding plans are accelerated after her recent news and she goes up into the attic to record a series of messages for her family. She tells Eddie, "I love the way kiwi fruit makes you sneeze," which is the signal for an unashamed, all-out sob-fest that takes absolutely no prisoners. Yet still the tone is wildly uneven, lurching from jokey to maudlin without pausing for refreshment, though the cast do their best to grasp at any tiny piece of credibility, particularly the splendid Shaun Dooley, who is really the emotional heart of Married Single Other. Though his beloved Lillie (Lucy Davis) is wretchedly annoying, he is so quietly sad and broken that you'd need a heart of plutonium not to share his misery.

Eight- to 12-year-olds will love this inoffensive family sitcom, which returns for a second series starring Caroline Quentin and Neil Dudgeon as a chaotic married couple attempting to corral their picturesquely badly behaved kids. Life of Riley can't possibly be aimed at grown-ups, what with its broad jokes about bottoms and the perils of incorrectly loading the dishwasher. The adults behave like kids, which is probably why young 'uns will enjoy it, and the kids are knowing, cheeky and annoying. It also features the world's oldest sight gag about that falling over backwards trust exercise, which even a late-developing toddler will see coming.

If you can't face the densely plotted and complex Five Days, which starts tonight on BBC1, then you might find some light relief in Married Single Other, with its mix of sentiment and broad comedy. If only it was a bit less coarse and a little bit warmer. In the second episode, Clint (played by Ralf Little), the womaniser in the group of friends, still hasn't heard anything from Abbey, the enigmatic model with the mesmerisingly bad hair extensions. When he does, he decides to throw a dinner party at which he can impress her and, more importantly, persuade his friends to tell her flattering things about him. It all goes badly and predictably awry. His mates slowly tear one another apart as their relationships start to fracture; Babs is furious with her lazy ex-lover, Dickie; while Lillie (a winking, shrugging and twitching Lucy Davis) sounds as if she might be going off the idea of marriage to caring paramedic Eddie (Shaun Dooley).

TV Watch: Married Single Other

You know what I like about ITV1's Married Single Other? There are no tortured women imprisoned in dungeons, no one has their kidneys removed while they are still alive and no one is brutally sexually assaulted having been drugged by their gynaecologist.

The fey music and cutesy title sequence are irresistible reminders of Cold Feet, the fondly remembered and influential series centred on the turbulent lives of a group of 30-something friends. Married Single Other is similar, but with softer edges that belie its gritty, northern housing estate setting. So it's a lightish drama with dark corners; the friends are fast-talking and there are shafts of humour; the designated funny guy is Ralf Little as Clint, a boozing, birding lad-about-town who falls for a comely, leather-clad motorbike-demo model (Spooks's Miranda Raison). Just when you think Married Single Other is a bit of froth, it goes all serious when Lillie (Lucy Davis) gets on the wrong side of an angry husband at the women's refuge where she works. And just to wrong-foot you once more, it then reveals a sentimental streak about 15 miles wide. So it's an odd mix, but likeable, even though Peter Souter's script doesn't offer many surprises and you may think you've seen it all before.

This is an odd one, a current affairs panel show that sounds like a weird hybrid of Have I Got News for You, Would I Lie to You? and Big Brother. Each week, three celebrity contestants will be locked away in a "media-free zone" without access to phones, television and the internet. After four days they will emerge, blinking into the light, to take their places in a television studio where The Bubble's quizmaster, the frighteningly learned and erudite David Mitchell, will question them on the week's news. But not just any news. The Bubble aims to dig out bizarre news and magazine stories so improbable they sound made up, and put them alongside fake items. It's down to the contestants to guess which ones are true. The Bubble's first participants are Frank Skinner, Reginald D. Hunter and Victoria Coren. We are told the format has done well overseas - but will The Bubble burst over here?

Radio Times on Harry Hill

The last series showed signs of wear and tear, possibly because it is a hugely labour-intensive show as Harry Hill and his small team of writers watch unimaginable amounts of television, most of it pap.