Chris Morris (I)

Director/writer/comedy genius Chris Morris once said of this typically daring satire that he aimed to do for Islamic fundamentalist terrorism what Dad's Army did for the Nazis - to show them up as being 'scary but ridiculous'. So here we follow the bungling antics of a group of home-grown suicide bombers, intent on bringing a jihad, if they can only work out their AK-47s from their elbows. The brightest of the bunch is Omar (shining star Riz Ahmed), a devout, suburban Muslim with a loving, seemingly smart wife. A funny, transgressive and frequently perplexing watch.

Those familiar with Graham Linehan's hyperactive Twitter presence will be unsurprised by some of the subjects tackled in this the hour-long finale of his geeky, live audience sitcom: embarrassing viral videos, anonymous hacktivists, the NSA. It's a testament to his fine plotting skills and mastery of tone that such dark fare is seamlessly woven into the shows usual cartoonish set pieces and Seinfeldian verbal tics ('small-person racist', 'emotionally artistic').

Along the way, our hapless trio of Moss (Richard Ayoade, whose new film The Double features original Reynholm Industries head honcho Chris Morris, fact fans), Roy (Chris O'Dowd, fresh from BBC2's Family Tree) and Jen (Katherine Parkinson, thankfully less shrill than in previous series) do battle with tiny baristas, pepper spray, women's slacks and, er, a van with breasts.

Naturally there are plenty of laughs to be had, especially from Matt Berry, on gloriously silly form as lunatic boss Douglas Reynholm.

But it drags in places and the same old problem remains: the main characters elicit no warmth. As a result, when the IT Crowd depart their basement lair for the last time this viewer was left feeling strangely unmoved. Adios then, nerdlingers: gone neither with a big bang nor a whimper.

A pilot developed into a four-part series in 2012, I'm Spazticus received mixed reviews, but C4 has had faith enough to try again this year. It's frustrating to report that little has improved. Deriving its title from an ancient, taboo-pushing Ian Dury song (Spasticus Autisticus) is symptomatic of the problem - it's woefully old-fashioned from start to finish.

The all-disabled cast do their best, but there's only so far one can go when a sketch involves pretending to be Hitler. When Freddie Starr isn't being channelled, Brass Eye is, with a carbon-copy of the famed 'Carla the elephant' skit involving a charity committed to stopping monkey arms being used instead of expensive prosthetic arms. Trouble is, whereas Chris Morris had the panache to make Martin Amis look like a tit, I'm Spazticus can only cajole plankton from TOWIE or Big Brother to make themselves look foolish. This raises precisely no laughs, simply because nobody expects reality rejects to be anything but dimwitted to begin with.

Amid the Jackass-lite buffoonery, one skit shines - an estate agent turning up to give an estimate on a wendy house. Otherwise, there's little to threaten the holy trinity of pranksters - Steve Allen, Sacha Baron Cohen and St Noel of Crinkley Bottom.

Charlie Brooker has been kind to me in print, so I must be careful not to be too kind about him, lest people suspect that I am dishing out a quid pro quo. On the downside, his weekly show behind a desk (Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe, BBC Two) sometimes makes it look as though he wants to eat the desk in his anger at the world.

But his larger dramatic creations reveal a Swiftian intelligence that is quite unusual when translated into an updated, high tech, electronic (squrrk!) field. There is quite a lot of squrrk! in Black Mirror. He wants you to know that your attention is being zapped into lightning trips from one field of reality to another.

The main reality in the latest show seemed to be that a helpless young woman was on the run from dozens of zombie-type vigilantes: shades of A Clockwork Orange, Assault on Precinct 13, etc.

But (squrrk!) not so fast. Towards the end it turns out that she is really the victim of a deadly game. With her wiped brain - Brooker is fond of the idea of the human mind being annihilated by television - she is being made to experience the suffering she caused when she tortured a child. But did she? Are the organizers of the game (see, as Brooker undoubtedly has, The Game, with Michael Douglas) normal people like us, at last getting the chance to inflict a just punishment that the psycho criminal will actually feel? Or what?

Doubts remain as the soundtrack says squrrk! Brooker used to be a companion at arms for Chris Morris but it is starting to look as if he, Brooker, has a scope all his own, and more powerful for being less parodic. He doesn't just make fun of television, which even I can do. He can see the fractures in life itself, as Swift could. On top of that he has the great virtue of having seen everything and yet not being derivative. His desk-eating savagery is too heartfelt for that.

Imagine if the Jackass boys sacked Steve O and replaced him with Mark Thomas. At times, that's the vibe of this prankishly political comedy show. Every now and then, creators Heydon Prowse and Jolyon Rubinstein nail it; the tax affairs of Vodafone are put under the spotlight in a brilliantly ballsy guerilla rebranding exercise, while a nicely placed blue plaque testifies to the rampant inconsistencies in the economic vision of George Osborne. Elsewhere, the pranks are less successful - no one's going to match Chris Morris in the absurd public vox pops stakes, so it's probably not worth trying. Still, it's great that this kind of material is getting an airing on BBC3 - perhaps comedy's response to the parlous state of the nation is beginning at last.

Chris Morris's scathing satire Brass Eye, Jessica Hynes and Simon Pegg's brilliantly offbeat Spaced, Victoria Pile's gloriously surreal Green Wing - Channel 4, it's fair to say, has reeled out a number of memorable comedies since it launched in 1982. Part of C4's Funny Fortnight, this lively two-hour programme counts down its top 30, as voted for by readers of the station's website. "Rude, radical, and irreverent, over the last 30 years Channel 4 comedy has taken us on one hell of a ride," intones the narrator, with no shortage of hyperbole. Though the tone, of course, is self-congratulatory, there's still plenty to enjoy here, not least the terrific archived footage, which reminds you why these show's have such an enduring appeal. Interspersed with these clips are hilarious insights from an impressive array of talking heads: among them, Tamsin Greig, Sally Phillips, Al Murray, Charlie Higson, David Mitchell, Robert Webb, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes, who says about Spaced: "When I think about all the things I've done, that was the most intense, the most fun, the thing I'm most proud of." One caveat: how did a show as derivative as Star Stories make it on to the list?

There are shades of Chris Morris, Mark Thomas and Dom Joly in this new series, a politically skewed news and sketch-based satire. The programme-makers have already hit the headlines in a stunt when the Chancellor George Osborne was handed a GCSE book to help with his maths skills at a speech to bankers. Now seeking out corruption, greed and hypocrisy, Heydon Prowse and Jolyon Rubinstein aim to humiliate and expose everyone from bankers and celebrities to Olympic organisers and tax-avoiding diplomats. Funny up to a point, even if you get the impression it's been done more artfully before.

The deterioration of Channel 4's comedy output is indicative of an overall slide in standards at C4, a sorry state of affairs that its Funny Fortnight season inadvertently illustrates. Boasting over 30 hours of new pilots, one-off specials and numerous repeats of former glories, it does at least offer some glimmers of hope, while at the same time neatly encapsulating everything that's wrong with C4 these days.

The worst offender by far is I'm Spazticus, a jaw-droppingly witless and misconceived hidden prank show in which disabled performers humiliate able-bodied members of the public.

Its title - taken from an Ian Dury protest song, but shorn of its original context for maximum shock value - is the least offensive thing about this disaster. What point is it trying to make exactly? That disabled people can be involved in woefully uninspired prank shows too, especially ones that define them solely by their disability? Wow, what a heartening message. Or, seeing as its flustered 'victims' are well-meaning innocents, is it saying that able-bodied people will go out of their way to help disabled people no matter how absurd the situation? Well, that's good isn't it?

Only one prank - a spoof vox pop in which members of the public are asked to choose which disability they'd least like to have - could reasonably be taken as pointed satire, although all it really proves is that dim people will partake in any old crock if there's a camera involved. But hasn't Chris Morris already made that point, albeit in a more imaginative way?

This is what C4, hosts of the 2012 Paralympics, regards as inclusiveness: a comedy show starring disabled people in which they're reduced to comedy props. The producers would doubtless pull a Gervais - an unfortunate phrase, but let's not dwell - and argue that it isn't problematic as they're willing participants and in on the joke. But all that proves is that some disabled actors are as desperate for work as able-bodied ones.

Actually, maybe that's the hidden genius of I'm Spazticus. Maybe it's a cleverly subversive comment on how Channel 4 will exploit anyone for profit, whatever their physical ability. And that, when you think about it, actually makes them the most trailblazing equal-opportunities employer in television. All hail C4, defender 
of minorities!

'Brass Eye': Tube Talk Gold

It's incredible to think that Chris Morris's news satire Brass Eye is 15 years old. We now live in a world of 24-hour news broadcasting, Twitter-mania and Sky-copters following even the faintest whiff of a scandal from the air. But despite this, Morris's lampooning of media hysteria and the celebrities who are happy to exploit it for their own gain feels just as perfect and pin-point accurate today as it did in 1997.

Black Pond review

Funny and surprisingly moving, this languidly surreal comedy cross-fertilises Mike Leigh and Chris Morris. It also rehabilitates the wonderfully lugubrious Langham's career.