Alison Graham

Socially inept Mark (David Mitchell) once used the Siege of Stalingrad as a template for seduction, so it's hardly surprising he's so hopeless with the ladies. He hasn't learnt his lesson; tonight, when the object of his adoration - shy former workmate Dobby - turns up for a date, he resorts to a plan of attack as he goes in for a kiss: "Time for me to roll in my militarised divisions! We're Roosevelt and Stalin!" It's excruciating and hilarious, as are his housemate Jeremy's (Robert Webb) equally clumsy attempts to romance an attractive Russian woman who lives in the same block of flats. But Mark and Jeremy are at their comical best when they are at their most craven and pathetic. So sit back and get ready to hold your jaw as it drops into your lap when the unfortunate Sophie finally reveals which one of them is the father of her baby.

Good on Channel 4 for keeping faith with Peep Show, despite viewing figures so small they can barely be seen with the naked eye. Now entering a sixth series, socially inept and emotionally stunted flatmates Mark and Jeremy (David Mitchell and Robert Webb) are trying not to think about the inescapable fact that one of them is the father of pregnant Sophie's baby. Wails Mark, "The baby is too big. You can't look at it. It's like the sun." It's up to the decrepit, drug-addled Super Hans (Matt King), who looks increasingly like a monster in a German Expressionist film, to keep the boys from one another's throats. But Mark's world turns to ashes when there's a fire drill at his office and the egregious Johnson (Paterson Joseph) makes an announcement in the car park. If you know little of Peep Show, then probably nothing short of the offer of a free cruise will persuade you to watch it. If you love it, rest assured, age has not wearied writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong's perfect little blackly comic gem.

Everyone says new comedies should be allowed a few episodes to bed down, though I've never understood why - who has the time to stick with something just in case it gets better? Which brings us to Home Time, from the Baby Cow stable that brought you Gavin & Stacey. It's an odd one - strangely flat and with a very irritating central character: a woman who left Coventry for London aged 17 and returns 12 years later to live with her parents. Her room hasn't changed, the East 17 poster is still on the wall and Oasis are still in the CD player. And her parents still treat her as if she's a wayward teenager. Most of her friends have stayed trapped in a 1997 time warp. Despite its shortcomings, there's a germ of something in Home Time that could turn out to be quite good, if you do have time to stay with it. There are some funny lines and writers Emma Fryer and Neil Edmond have captured the horrors of going back to an old life. But it should have been tried out on BBC3 first.

After a one-off Christmas special, someone had the bright idea of bringing back Shooting Stars for a new series. It was an odd decision, as this surreal, not-a-panel-game feels threadbare and tired. Sadly, time has not been kind. Team captains Jack Dee and Ulrika Jonsson do their best, but they don't have much to work with. The guests, particularly The One Show's Christine Bleakley, are game and do their best but it's a slog. Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer still have their moments, of course; Reeves's impressions of an unintelligible club singer are still funny; and it's good to see Matt Lucas again as the excitable big baby George Dawes. At least he looks like he's having fun. But generally the humour is too scatological and the madness that characterised Shooting Stars in its heyday and which made the show feel fresh and unlike anything else, now feels forced.

The best bit this week is David Mitchell's sort-of impression of Jodie Marsh (she's a "glamour model", the one who isn't Jordan). Of course Mitchell is ill-equipped even to approximate Ms Marsh's two famously overblown assets, but he does a very decent career precis of the big-bosomed one's raison d'etre, albeit delivered in his exasperated A-level history teacher's voice. It's pretty much down to captains Mitchell and Lee Mack to keep things going, with some lacklustre guests. Jimmy Carr is impossible to like; Terry Christian is clearly baffled and well aware that he's out of his depth, to the point that you might end up feeling sorry for him; and singer Jamelia yet again inexplicably turns up on a TV panel show. Host Rob Brydon helps the show bounce along as he referees the arguments and interrogations: was Christian interrogated by police hunting a jewel thief? And did comedian Marcus Brigstocke work as a podium dancer?

After a one-off Christmas special, someone had the bright idea of bringing back Shooting Stars for a new series. It was an odd decision, as this surreal, not-a-panel-game feels threadbare and tired. Sadly, time has not been kind. Team captains Jack Dee and Ulrika Jonsson do their best, but they don't have much to work with. The guests, particularly The One Show's Christine Bleakley, are game and do their best but it's a slog. Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer still have their moments, of course; Reeves's impressions of an unintelligible club singer are still funny; and it's good to see Matt Lucas again as the excitable big baby George Dawes. At least he looks like he's having fun. But generally the humour is too scatological and the madness that characterised Shooting Stars in its heyday and which made the show feel fresh and unlike anything else, now feels forced.

There's a dramatic change of pace when the normally silly Jam & Jerusalem gets a bit serious and even a little weepy. Hearty, horsey countrywoman Caroline (played by Jam & Jerusalem's co-writer Jennifer Saunders) throws a dinner party at her substantial home, though because she's socially inept, she ends up with a guest list of people she doesn't want to entertain. But, in some unexpectedly poignant and touching scenes, Caroline struggles to come to terms with the posting of her young soldier son to Afghanistan and it's up to her neighbours to provide support. It's a nice interlude, as is the unfolding of a surprising romance between two of Clatterford's more shy and misunderstood inhabitants. But fear not, Jam & Jerusalem's broad farce is still in evidence as the guildswomen throw a chaotic fashion show to raise funds for the town's cash-strapped boutique, House of Mary's.

Jennifer Saunders's strange tales of bucolic madness and comic grotesques, a sort of The League of Ladies as opposed to The League of Gentlemen, returns briefly for a three-part series. Nothing much has changed in Clatterford, where everyone is bonkers, particularly the members of the local women's guild. These include widowed Sal (Sue Johnston) who is trying and failing to cut down on her drinking, though she's roused from her frequent stupors when she learns that developers are converting a barn at the bottom of her garden. Rumour has it that it's for the suave Charles Dance, which sends most of the women into a frenzy of lust. But Sal is determined to put up a fight, despite the objections of her straitlaced son (played by David Mitchell), who fears she will damage his prospects of becoming a Lib Dem MP. It's a silly little tale full of comedy drunkenness and low farce - there's even a subplot about the local vicar apparently behaving disreputably. But daft as J&J is, there's still something oddly endearing about it.

Radio Times Preview

The mere prospect of Anonymous on ITV1 on Saturday makes me want to take out my own eyes, poach them on a low heat, cover them in Tabasco sauce and pop them back in again.

I don't know. You wait years for a dismally unfunny, fatuous series about personal assistants, then two come along at once. Monday Monday joins the witless pantheon (alongside BBC3's Personal Affairs) and stars Fay Ripley as the inept, alcoholic head of human resources whose secretary does all the work. I think we are meant to find the whole idea of human resources intrinsically absolutely hilarious, but we've got to be given something to laugh at. Ripley's character sleeping off a hangover in her car is not, in itself, funny. The cast is good, but ill-served, particularly Holly Aird as a tough new boss who's having an affair with her empty bimbo of a male secretary. The dialogue is pitiful - any series that makes an off-colour gag based on the word "stuffing" deserves to go back to the 1970s where it belongs.