Alison Graham

Radio Times review

Pointless's Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman guest-star as themselves when Lee and Daisy appear on the blockbuster BBC One/z] daytime quiz show.

Of course there are two big hurdles - Lee (Lee Mack) knows nothing about anything and Daisy (Katy Wix) is so exquisitely stupid she thinks that The Prisoner of Azkaban is a book of the Bible.

This is the perfect comedy set-up and they both fall headfirst into every comic trap that's been carefully built for them, from Lee's woeful knowledge of American presidents to Daisy's pathological insistence on taking absolutely everything she is told, literally (Wix is brilliant, by the way).

Armstrong and Osman have some fun, too, with Armstrong twinkling and flirting with Lee and Daisy's friend Lucy, and Osman becoming a gimlet-eyed avenger when he sees right through a craven Lee.

Radio Times review

Overtired after an all-nighter in the studio doing "Sat Nav for the Elderly" ("Abbotsbury...Abingdon...Acton") bumptious actor/voiceover artist Steven Toast accidentally reveals on Woman's Hour the name of the murderer in Anthea Crippen's creaky old play The Moose Trap. So, after a 60-year run, attendances dwindle and Toast's chance of a West End comeback as Inspector Attenborough are torpedoed.

Maybe Toast is too insider-y for some, though it's not as full of actors' inside jokes as you might think, but when it soars, it hits the comedy sun. There's a good running gag about Breaking Bad bores, and Toast (Matt Berry) has a catastrophic encounter with Jeremy Paxman (The Mimic's Terry Mynott) when he auditions for the job of the man who shouts out the contestants' names on a "university quiz."

Radio Times review

Pompous actor Steven Toast's nemesis, Ray Purchase, has ratted him out to The Tax People, so he owes £250,000 and he needs to find work, fast.

But suitable jobs are thin on the ground. Even John Midsomer Murders Nettles and has resorted to poaching to make ends meet. (Yes, that really is the John Nettles in a guest cameo).

In desperation, Toast's magnificently raddled agent, Jane Plough (Doon Mackichan) suggests that her client might like to direct a stage version of Calendar Girls.

Matt Berry as Toast is at his glorious best when he launches into tirades of scene-chewing pomposity. His outrageous treatment of the Calendar Girls women ("I intend to treat these people like cattle") will make your eyes water.

Radio Times review

Citizen Khan is the perfect pre-watershed retro-comedy. Kids love the pompous community leader because he's as daft as a brush and those of us old enough to remember 1970s telly will sigh with happy recognition at the ancientness of the gags.

Khan (Adil Ray) gets in a tangle with that greatest of all comedy staples, trying to impress his daughter's prospective mother-in-law, coupled with probably the second of all comedy staples, trying not to mention another man's terrible toupee.

Naturally Khan can't help himself and falls headlong into numerous tonsorial traps. Watch out, too, for a piece of slapstick involving a remote-controlled swivel chair as the Khans invite doltish Amjad's parents for a pre-wedding dinner. Mind the best china!

Radio Times review

"Quinoa, fennel and ramekins [are] the names of your future children."

This is what is yelled by slacker Lee (Lee Mack), who's hopelessly drunk at a society party and furious at the company of his and Lucy's humourless, dull neighbours.

Of course, no one in their right mind would ever invite someone so socially inept to such a do, so the road is paved for Lee to get hammered and reveal his working-class roots at full, outraged volume: "I am scum! I've got a bag for life from Greggs!" Poor, long-suffering Lucy (Sally Bretton), all she wanted to do was widen her circle of friends...

Radio Times review

Voiceover artist Steven Toast is back in the studio, being tormented by producer Clem Fandango and a familiar-sounding man. Is that really Mayor Boris Johnson who wants Toast to record the familiar Tube warning "Mind the gap"?

The perpetually fuming Toast (Matt Berry, co-writer with Father Ted's Arthur Mathews) returns for a second series, which mines the rich seam of bawdiness opened by the first.

Toast of London is spectacularly coarse (in the opening episode Toast signs up for a Prostitutes and Celebrities Blow-Football Tournament). But Berry is brilliant as Steven, a hopeless actor with a career so far on the skids he has to dress up as Charles Dickens for a themed London bus tour. It brings him into direct conflict with his nemesis, the repellent Ray Purchase.

Radio Times review

I know, Citizen Khan is puerile and silly, and possibly promotes unhelpful stereotypes. I'm in no position to comment on the latter (Khan is created and played by British Muslim Adil Ray), but in comedy terms, I love its old-school innocence.

Khan is every fumbling sitcom man-child since Terry Scott in Terry and June (which Citizen Khan resembles), a buffoon surrounded by sensible women. There is nothing sophisticated here, it's not Veep or Modern Family.

This is a very British comedy. Khan gets into scrapes because of his own stupidity, arrogance or overweening ego. He tries to get out of them, and digs himself deeper into the mud. It's a pantomime and its laughs are broad.

In the first of a new series, Khan tries to stop his wife's mother from going to live in a care home. But only because he thinks she's worth £25,000.

Radio Times review

If you like your smut applied not with a trowel but with a cement mixer, then you're going to be in heaven as the innuendo- and entendre-festooned gags simply don't stop.

The supply is inexhaustible because slacker Lee (Lee Mack) is at the epicentre of that beloved comedy set-up, the bloke donating his sperm. You might have to cover your ears and put granny in the porch for half an hour when the long-suffering Lucy, desperate for a baby, asks her friend and flatmate to help her.

It will surprise no one to learn that the opportunity to crack that old chestnut "pull out at the last minute" is given an airing in an episode that's as coarse as cardboard.

Radio Times review

Those two enfants terribles and scourges of answering machines everywhere, Ross and Russell Brand, reunite. Of course, a lot of water has flowed under many bridges since the Andrew Sachs/Radio 2 debacle.

Also coming in for a chat on the couch is another celebrity used to unflattering column inches, Lindsay Lohan, winning respectable reviews for her London stage role in Speed-the-Plow, and that nice Daniel Radcliffe. Music is provided by the Script.

Radio Times review

Lee is the kind of man who, when he's in a hole, doesn't stop digging, he just goes on to plough another hole, and then another one, and then another one...

He's almost buried alive in tonight's comedy of errors as he unwittingly manages to get himself and Lucy (Sally Bretton) invited to a christening party by the baby's very reluctant parents.

TV dad par excellence Hugh Outnumbered Dennis is the baby's father, a picture of quiet exasperation as Lee (Lee Mack) and Lucy's doomed attempts to buy a suitable present for his son spiral into madness.

It's all tremendously silly and contrived, of course, to an almost palm-sweating level, but Mack, Bretton and Katy Wix as dim Daisy keep it bobbing along.