Catherine Tate

Instead of the usual Christmas special, Catherine Tate has turned Nan into Scrooge, visited by ghosts of Christmas past and her deceased husband. It promises to be utterly appalling - in a good way.

Alternative Christmas cracker jokes

Catherine Tate, Ricky Gervais, Ed Byrne, Chris Addison... can these and other top comedians make your festive dinner go with a bang?

E4's rollicking sci-fi series is a warning to potential Asbo candidates. Do the crime, do the time; in the Misfits' case, 200 hours' community service, dressed in jumpsuits from the Guantanamo Bay branch of B&Q. Cleaning graffiti off walls is a doddle when there are murderous probation officers, naked men and chippy chav Kelly - aka Catherine Tate's Lauren Cooper - to contend with. Caught in a supernatural storm, the teenage tag team were endowed with phenomenal powers. Tonight, Alisha has fun abusing hers while invisible Simon's online relationship with Shygirl18 blossoms. And what power was bestowed on Nathan, the love child of Craggy Island's Mrs Doyle and Simon Amstell? Lycanthropy? Or the power to be the most annoying Irish gobs**** since Louis Walsh?

Meeshell is a girl of our times. Obsessed by fame, convinced she's a dead good singer, she'll do anything to bag a No.1 single and a celebrity footballer boyfriend because 'they even smell famous'. And if this entails dumping your best friend and your boyfriend in front of an 8 million-strong TV audience, then so be it.

Welcome to Mouth To Mouth, a modern amorality tale that deconstructs the X Factor generation through a sextet of comic monologues told straight to camera. Subtle it isn't - Meeshell is a character only just this side of Catherine Tate caricature - but this bitter little drama of dreams dashed and friendships betrayed on the potholed road to talent-show glory makes a nifty companion piece to the ongoing travails of Jedward, Stacey, Joe and the rest.

Writer Karl Minns has littered his script with knowing pop references (Meshell on boyfriend Tyler: 'We're like the Ting Tings - he presses all the buttons at the back and I get all the glory') and it's that sharp voice that gives Mouth To Mouth its pout. Meeshell may seem like a typical airhead but behind the pink fluff there's a soul of steel. Slacker Tyler looks for all the world a loser but he's not above a kiss-and-tell when the price is right.

Whether Mouth To Mouth's concept can stand four more episodes - the same tale spun out through the eyes of all the players - remains to be seen. But I'm hopeful of seeing a snatch of Fame Search, the show that propelled Meeshell to her YouTube moment of loved-one dumping fame. 'A girl group won,' our heroine noted bitterly. 'One lezza, one bi, one straight. Called Threeway. Bit gimmicky.' Louis Walsh is on the phone already.

This charming romantic comedy set in 1985 stars James McAvoy as a working-class lad from Essex who uses his place at Bristol University primarily as a way of achieving his dream of appearing in the final of University Challenge. On the way, of course, he falls for a team-mate (Rebecca Hall) and rows with his mother (Catherine Tate).

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.

And a few other notes, both low and high: why no women on Chain Reaction (R4), where public figures (usually comedians) get to interview other public figures (usually comedians)? Yes, we've had Catherine Tate and Arabella Weir, but we're six series in now. This week's programme, the first in the new batch, began with Robert Llewellyn interviewing Dave Gorman. Gorman was far too pleased with himself; but then, that's the nature of this self-congratulatory series. You may as well call it Blowing Smoke.

Genius is essentially BBC2's replacement for QI, which was promoted to BBC1 for its current run. The ever-likeable Dave Gorman presents the series, which gives a platform for members of the Great British Public to share their "genius" ideas. It's essentially a silly version of Dragons' Den, with harebrained ideas like a jacket with a hood secreted in an arm-zipper, to enable a man to shelter a girl from rain by putting an arm over their shoulder.

The comedy is reliant on the idea being pitched and Gorman's ability to comically evolve and test the brainwave, so it's a little hit-and-miss, but generally this showed promise. And the would-be inventors were often funnier than Gorman and guest Catherine Tate combined, which was a surprise.

The primary concept is one of baffling unreasonableness. Members of the public are encouraged to write in with their "wacky" suggestions for future inventions - basically rehashes of the "Letter Bocks" pages of Viz. If they are chosen, they then have to stand up and fill five minutes of prime-time television sparring with two professional comedians - who, additionally, have had time to prepare relevant material - in order to "win". As you would expect, it's a bloodbath - like a light entertainment Wounded Knee, but with a studio audience.

In the opening episode, Dave Gorman and Catherine Tate "challenged" four members of the public on their inventions, which included an anorak with an extra hood, for sharing with a friend, and some surrealist, sub-Vic Reeves nonsense about winning a race on stilts. As soon as Tate and Gorman started on them it was like watching two cats idly biting at frogs they'd found in the garden.

The BBC amazes me. It takes four years for Stewart Lee - a comedian with 17 years' experience - to get a six-part series; yet in Genius wholly inexperienced members of the public are expected to deliver five minutes of broadcast-quality improvised material at the drop of a hat. What, literally, is that all about?

Comedian Dave Gorman hosts this quirky new series, which was first 'seen' on Radio 4. This is how it works - viewers submit bonkers ideas in the hope of being declared geniuses, and tonight, special guest Catherine Tate helps Dave consider - and sometimes road test - some of the revolutionary notions. They include a fully democratic bus with passenger steering wheels and cold-air balloons for those who hate heights. Brilliant stuff.