Ben Miller (I)

Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller's comedy sketch show features the sort of quotably amusing characters that made Little Britain such a success. The street-slang-talking Second World War pilots, in particular, may well be remembered in the same breath as Little Britain's entertainingly verbose Vicky Pollard or Catherine Tate's snappy "Am I bovvered?" schoolgirl in years to come. In tonight's episode, the pilots are aggrieved that one of their "homeboys" has been talking behind their backs ("Oh my days, that's like, er, so two-faced"). Other highlights include Divorced Dad giving his son some frank - and rather crude - sex advice, and Terry Devlin, the Ulsterman Royal Correspondent, talking about the intricacies of the Royal Family's lives.

Accident-prone art historian Dennis Lincoln-Park is in trouble again. Tonight, he introduces us to an "absolutely priceless" pen-and-ink drawing by Rembrandt. We know from the word go it's doomed, though it's still childishly funny when the inevitable happens. It's typical of Ben Miller that even when the scripts aren't classics, he lifts the material by his sheer comic energy. That's the case with his embittered solo honeymooner who tells anyone who'll listen about how his bride ran off with the DJ. Similarly, his car showroom customer who insists on acting out what might happen in the vehicle if he bought it ends up a surreal tour de force. Elsewhere, there are enjoyable spoofs on The Krypton Factor and the Olympic logo design, and Alexander Armstrong's RAF pilot has had a letter that makes him depressed: "Like with issues around self-esteem issues, you know?"

John Cleese once said that it was harder to be funny than to be clever. The Cambridge-educated Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller obviously decided to take the high road and go for funny in the second series of The Armstrong and Miller Show.

Their sketches have no point or satirical edge to them. Teachers doing acrobatics while their pupils' backs are turned during an exam, an accident-prone art presenter, even their famous street-talking RAF men have nothing to say. Yet most of the stuff - barring a terrible Star Trek sketch that could have come out of Morecambe and Wise - works. The Blue Peter presenters apologising in child-speak for their off-air decadences may even turn into a classic.

The performances are meticulous. Particularly to be savoured on Friday was Armstrong's tactical use of accents: the northern Blue Peter man's pronunciation of "film" with an extra couple of Ls in it, and the info-commercial guy's voice suddenly dropping a few social classes when it came to saying "three tharsand peounds". There is cleverness here, but it is in the detail.

The Armstrong & Miller Show is one of the best sketch-comedy series since The Fast Show. Since we're on the subject of class, this is probably because Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller are relatively posh. They are the heirs of Monty Python - via A Bit of Fry & Laurie - in that the core comedy involves authority figures behaving in a way you don't expect. Armstrong and Miller make good authority figures. They are best known as the RAF pilots who speak in modern youth patois. In the first sketch of the new series, the pilots face the firing squad: "No way, blood. I's asthmatic. I could actually die." Jokes about the class system and authority figures ought to be baffling to a modern audience. The 1960s were supposed to sweep all that away. Yet here we are, 40 years later, still trying to make sense of it all. Makes you think, blood, innit?

The Armstrong & Miller Show is one of those programmes that it's best to watch with a fast-forward button at your disposal. It isn't that they aren't funny, by any means. I laughed out loud at one new sketch, which replays P.G. Wodehouse without the innocence, with the Bertie Wooster character exasperatedly asking his butler to murder a kitchen-maid that he's impregnated. The joke is that the Jeeves type still inhabits a world in which both the pregnancy and the solution are as unthinkable as DayGlo spats: "Perhaps if Sir were to disguise himself as an Abyssinian?" he suggested hopefully. There was a textbook bit of comic acting from Ben Miller too - in a skit about compensation-claim adverts - when in rapid succession he had to do fake pain and real pain (you had to be there really). But they return to some ideas far too often. The Blue Peter-style apology - in which you read between the bland lines of BBC damage control to a squalid bacchanal of sex and drugs - was funny the first time, quite funny the second but wearing distinctly thin the third time it came back, when we were still only 15 minutes into the show.

The second series of The Armstrong & Miller Show was made a year ago and shelved by the brainiacs in the BBC for 12 months to see if it would mature like a fine cheese. Perhaps because we know that, it seems just a little bit dated. Maybe that's us projecting though. It's still funny, containing all your old favourites - the RAF chav talkers etc. The best new sketch is the Blue Peter presenters and their drunken scandals. Traditional stuff but quality nonetheless. (Ben Miller is better).

A decade after a BBC producer told them they were too posh to have their own television show, Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller return with another series and a handful of favourite characters from series one. Coming back are the RAF airmen who use the language of modern-day teenagers in upper-class accents; this week they're up against a firing squad and seemingly incapable of seeing the gravity of their situation. New to the scene are three presenters of a Blue Peter-style programme apologising to their audience of children for drunken scandals. It makes for fairly traditional, but very funny, sketch show material.

The word is that 2009 may prove the year Ben Miller and Alexander Armstrong finally hit the big time. They've been on the TV map for over a decade now (their first show began life on the Paramount Comedy channel in 1997) but acclaim for their first BBC One sketch series two years ago means that a head of steam has gathered behind this, their second BBC outing. The old favourites of the previous series return - such as the Second World War pilots who speak with upper-class accents but use modern street slang. Among the new characters are the excellent Dennis Lincoln Park, an accident-prone historian, and a teacher who finds inventive ways to amuse himself while invigilating high school exams.

Check out the logo for the lads' new production company as the credits roll tonight. Ben Miller and Alexander Armstrong are embracing their inner toff, with their own Toff Media, and fittingly, that logo isn't even a logo - it's a rather saucy coat of arms.

It's in honour of a nameless BBC exec who once told them they were too posh to have their own show - and didn't anticipate that their ever-so-posh Second World War pilots who talk like urban rappers might turn out a bit of a hit.

Other regular characters back for series two include the posh well-informed Prime Minister, their very posh and very rude Flanders and Swann-style musical duo, and the not-so-posh Neanderthals.

But the funniest sketches tonight see them playing children's TV presenters, forced to explain to their young viewers about why their naughty behaviour has been splashed all over the tabloids yet again. "We wanted to cheer Jason up, so we took him to a special dancing club... to watch some dancing..."

It's fun to see a sketch show so deeply rooted in Britishness and tonight Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller fly the flag nicely. The posh World War II pilots who are fluent in modern-day teenage slang make their usual welcome appearance, this time facing a firing squad ('we never done nuthin'/'I need my inhalaaar!'), plus the duo try to explain away drunken and drug-fuelled exploits in the manner of Blue Peter presenters. The highlight, though, is the accident claims advert for people who have had an accident reconstructing accidents for accident claims adverts. Mad, but brilliant.