Alison Graham

Veronica (Rachael Stirling), who is really Danny, is bored by her dreary fiance's wedding plans and dreams of escaping her unhappy life with her new love. Danny (Martin Freeman), who is really Veronica, is miserable, too, but wants his old life back. And he/she is very determined as the end of this bittersweet and rather endearing gender-swap drama approaches. There are some tender moments as Veronica/Danny tries to hang on to the life she has become used to but, after a chance meeting with Danny/Veronica (it's not really as confusing as it sounds), she knows that that life isn't really hers at all. So the pair come to an irrevocable and possibly dangerous decision as an electric storm approaches. Though the ending may feel a bit flat, there's still a strong sense that the lives of everyone involved have changed for ever.

Radio Times Review

What I like about it is its underlying decency. And, no, I haven't started wearing a bonnet and having the vapours at the sight of uncovered piano legs before taking refuge on my fainting couch. But if you watch it - and I recommend that you do - you'll realise that all of the characters are good-hearted in a way that isn't remotely sickly.

Sketch shows can be hit-and-miss but this often wildly funny TV version of David Mitchell and Robert Webb's Radio 4 series That Mitchell and Webb Sound scored more than most when it first aired on BBC2 in 2006. Long before Webb became an unlikely sex symbol with his Lycra-clad Flashdance turn on Let's Dance For Comic Relief, the sight of him dressed as a banana and doing a silly dance while eating a banana was similarly, stupidly funny. Also introduced here are the self-doubting Nazis, a cruel vicar and two vapid, camp bores.

After the success of Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes and Lost in Austen, it's obvious TV types realise they are on to a good thing with high-concept series about characters plucked from their ordinary lives to be sent back in time. Though Boy Meets Girl has nothing to do with time travel, it does have the same supernatural "What am I doing here and how do I get back?" subtext, though its unique selling point is accidental gender-swapping. Strangers Danny (Martin Freeman) and Veronica (Rachael Stirling) become trapped in one another's bodies after an accident during a storm. Now, Boy Meets Girl could simply die of cliche, but it's rescued by the leads, particularly Stirling as Veronica/Danny, who, in the nicest possible way, is thoroughly believable as a man trapped inside a woman's body. And though the genders are painted in broad strokes - men are slobs and women are preoccupied with lipstick - Boy Meets Girl manages to be both warm and quite sweet.

The 2007 special edition of the black political satire is packed with blood-drawingly sharp observations and ruthless, brilliant dialogue. And a lot of laughs. We eavesdrop on Peter Mannion (Roger Allam) a bemused politician who wonders if he's out of step with the modern world. Can he still call yobboes 'yobboes', for instance? Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) and his ferocious sidekick Jamie (Paul Higgins) and back too (hooray!) with language that would make a northern rugby league team blush.

Funny, fantastically inventive, warm and just wonderful, this W&G adventure was the most watched TV programme last Christmas. It's packed with multiple layers of jokes and plenty of fine visual gags, including delightful homages to movies - from The Matrix to Ghost - and it loses none of its charm with a repeat viewing. The ever resourceful pair are now earning their living as bakers, and once more Wallace's (Peter Sallis) soft heart gets him into trouble when he falls for Bake-o-Lite girl Piella Bakewell (voiced by Sally Lindsay). But she's trouble, and it's up to Gromit - whose gloriously expressive eyebrows say everything - to save the day.

Stewart Lee takes a discursive romp through television, taking swipes at everything from BBC1's The One Show and its host Adrian Chiles ("like being trapped in the buffet car of a slow-moving express train with a Toby jug") to TV audiences ("What do you want?"). The latter is an extended rant against anyone who's ever taken part in a "top TV funny moment" poll and cast their vote for "Del Boy falling through the bar". Lee obviously isn't a fan and he's quietly furious. He goes on too long, but you can see his point. But Lee is at his best when he's firing pellets of wit at everything from BBC founder Lord Reith's supposed "jazz racism" to Andrew Lloyd Webber's Any Dream Will Do.

Stewart Lee is a raconteur who might remind you of Dave Allen; he's clever, discursive and very funny. Though best known for co-writing Jerry Springer: The Opera, which made him the focus of a national hate campaign, Lee is a gifted stand-up with a laconic style. In the first instalment of a new series, his subject is books in general and so-called "celebrity hardbacks" in particular, which allows Lee, who looks a bit like a very young, very tired Morrissey, to give Jeremy Clarkson and Chris Moyles both barrels. I loved his dismissal of the latter's second autobiographical volume, The Difficult Second Book, as a title that showed "a degree of irony and self-awareness largely absent from the text". The sketches that smatter the show don't work very well (they never did for Dave Allen, either), but just go with the flow, because everything else works a treat.

TV can be a cruel business. Just look at the fate of dismal soap Echo Beach after its disastrous forced marriage to the sitcom Moving Wallpaper. The latter was quite good, the former was awful and thus the two divorced, with Echo Beach cut adrift for good. And so Moving Wallpaper returns, all on its ownsome, to resume its comic behind-the-scenes tales of fictional television folk. With the death of Echo Beach, brutally and quite truthfully dismissed because it was "s**t and nobody watched it", according to venal producer Jonathan Pope (Ben Miller), the neurotic production team anxiously awaits news of its future. The first series of Moving Wallpaper was too TV-insidery for a broad audience, and the second will probably look just as smug, or impenetrable because it's full of in-jokes. It has its moments, though, even if it too often descends into farce.

Though Free Agents is a droll and very winning romantic comedy, don't expect soft-focus hearts and flowers. Yes, it's sweet and poignant, but it's also frequently filthy - imagine Richard Curtis doing dirty. The pairing of Stephen Mangan and Sharon Horgan as its emotionally stunted leads - talent agents Alex and Helen - is an inspired one. He's sad and embittered after a messy divorce and misses his children; she binge-drinks to blot out her obsession with her dead fiancee. They have a disastrous date where he cries after sex, then face the crippling embarrassment of having to work together, day in, day out. This possibly sounds gruesome, but it's not; Free Agents (you might recall its 2007 pilot) is a deliciously skewed romance that's adult, modern and funny. And Mangan and Horgan are appealing as two lost and damaged souls in search of happiness.