Andy Hamilton (I)

You need to watch QI. I don't know if you know it at all, it's been around for a while in England. Stephen Fry's the host, Alan Davies is the permanent guest star and there's a rotating panel of famous people whose qualification for being on is they're amusing. Or Quite Interesting, which is what QI stands for. It's really just people talking shit. Tonight they're Rob Brydon, Andy Hamilton and Charlie Higson. I only really know Rob Brydon, and I love him. He's in Gavin & Stacey at the moment, it was on UKTV last night, he plays Bryn, Stacey's uncle. The topics on QI are letters from the alphabet, we're up to the Fs at this point, a fair way into the series. But it's a loose half hour. Tonight includes James Bond's job, Mick Jagger's walk, Bert Ward's post-Batman and Robin career in porn, and flags. Quite a lot about flags - extremely entertaining and mindless, just what you need during stressful times of (insert source of personal worry here). Even the buzzers are good - Andy Hamilton's is the Captain Pugwash music.

"Nowadays, it seems like experts give birth to a new theory every few minutes," said Andy Hamilton at the beginning of It's Only a Theory. I don't know about that, but if so they're at least matched by comedians pupping new comedy-panel shows, most of which, sadly, are doomed to be tied in a sack and dropped into the swiftly flowing river of television oblivion. I'm guessing that It's Only a Theory isn't going to make it to adulthood, because it's very difficult to work out what it's for or how it's meant to work. A panel of two gag merchants (Hamilton and Reginald Hunter, who can both be funny) are joined by a celeb guest (it was Clare Balding this week) to offer peer group review on the theories of scientists and experts who quite like the idea of being on telly. They then say whether they've been approved or rejected, though it isn't clear on what basis they arrive at this decision and nobody gives a damn anyway. Last night, they batted around the ideas of a gerentologist who thinks the first 1,000-year-old person has already been born and a psychologist who believes that we shouldn't medicalise sadness - these two topics provoking a meandering and underwhelming blend of flippancy and bland earnestness. It isn't that the machinery doesn't work, it's that they completely forgot to put the machinery in. I can only hope it isn't distracting Hamilton from writing more episodes of Outnumbered.

With It's Only A Theory, BBC4 seem to have taken the unusual step of commissioning a Radio 4 comedy before it's even had a 6.30pm slot. Devised by the reliable Andy Hamilton, whose career takes in Shelley, Not The Nine O'Clock News, Drop The Dead Donkey, Armstrong And Miller and Outnumbered, it sees scientific experts bring their hypotheses to the studio where they are subjected to an interrogation by Hamilton, his regular sidekick, panel-show favourite Reginald D Hunter and a special guest, this week being the blokey Clare Balding. Like most of those Radio 4 shows it is amusing rather than funny and the best lines in this ep are delivered by ageing expert Aubrey De Grey, but it is nonetheless well worth a look.

We always welcome more TV time given over to Reginald D Hunter. Unfortunately, the format's a bit clunky in this new series, which sees Hunter teaming up with Andy Hamilton and special guests to chew over a new theory posited by an expert in their field. Still, Hunter does roll out some gems, with tonight's highlight being an argument between himself and Clare Balding over the virtues of Colin Firth. You can probably guess who wins.

Taking the Flak (BBC2), which competes for the same airtime, begins promisingly enough.

Outnumbered lost out to The IT Crowd at the Baftas this year, which wasn't just baffling it was also a real pity, because Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton's winning portrayal of the minor absurdities of family life, and its brilliant, scene-stealing child actors, deserve proper recognition. In a repeat of series two's first episode, the family, including hapless mum and dad Sue and Pete (Claire Skinner and Hugh Dennis), is off to a wedding. As always they hover perilously close to being late as violence-obsessed Ben (Daniel Roche) debates if hitting someone who is attacking you with a shovel would be OK, limpid-eyed Karen (Ramona Marquez) locks herself in the bathroom and Jake (Tyger Drew-Honey) worries. It's achingly funny and packed with lovely moments, including Karen's remorseless quizzing of the increasingly unnerved bride, that always end with the grown-ups being outmanoeuvered.

Don't get too excited about the reappearance of Outnumbered. This repeat of the first episode of series two is just plugging an awkward gap in the TV schedules and the rest of the series won't be following. The family are at the wedding of Sue's cousin Julie - and young Karen (Ramona Marquez), the undisputed star of the show, is chief bridesmaid, quizzing the bride relentlessly on her dubious taste in boyfriends. While we wait for a third series to materialise, there are plenty of other TV shows where Karen's unique world view and unwavering style of interrogation could - and should - be employed. Hosting Have I Got News For You, standing in for Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight, interviewing suspects on The Bill... She's far too good to waste on just sitcoms.

A complaint often levelled at television is that there are far too many repeats slotted into the schedules, which can be a highly valid gripe. But when the repeat in question is another go for Outnumbered series two (which gained decent ratings on its previous Saturday showing), we'll let it go. Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin's heavily improvised comedy is a constant delight as Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner play the average couple with three kids - and it's the kids that steal the show every time. In this first episode, Pete and Sue shepherd their brood to a family wedding - with predictably chaotic results. Highly recommended.

Ah, you lucky things. This is another chance to see the opening episode from the last series of Outnumbered, about the travails of a middle-class couple with three children struggling to do their best and failing miserably. Sharply observed and brilliantly cast, it is accurate, warm-hearted, understated and free of a horrible laughter track. But what makes it so special, above and beyond all those other estimable qualities, is the astonishing acting of the three children. They are the most natural comic performances from children that I have ever seen on television. Sitcoms are usually a form of hell on earth, in which the viewer feels as though he or she is being torn apart by a pack of brain-dead hyenas. This is a glorious, life-enhancing exception.

Andy Hamilton and Reginald D Hunter claim It's Only A Theory

Filming has finished on It's Only A Theory, an eight x 30-minute entertainment programme for BBC Four that sees highly-qualified professionals and experts submitting their theories about life, the universe and everything for examination by a panel of two comedians and a guest celebrity.