Christopher Stevens

What Car Share needs is a pair of jump leads

The slowest-moving love affair on telly is back. A traffic jam on the M62 shifts like Concorde compared to the romance between John and Kayleigh in Peter Kay's Car Share.

Mrs Brown's chatshow is pure drivel

Everything that's fun about family variety turned to mud in the hands of Mrs Brown and her brood. Even the gags that half-worked were overdone to death.

Red Nose Day Actually review

It's the ones who don't care about age who stay youngest. Forget the Botox, and just have a good laugh.

Catastrophe review

Catastrophe has evolved into the most realistic comedy on TV. At the same time, it is also the most inventively sexual and foul-mouthed.

Damned: Jo Brand strikes comedy gold

This set-up could easily disintegrate, unless the cast keep working on ways to make us like their unlovable characters. So far, they're giving it everything.

Review: comedy secret Dick Emery could teach Morgana

The variety is so broad that it's impossible to watch her, in or out of character, without thinking: 'I've seen her in something else...'

Writer Mike Bullen could do with going back to his classic early series of Cold Feet (ITV) and binge-watching them, to discover what is missing in the revival.

It isn't difficult. The show has become so grimly miserable. Divorce, bankruptcy, depression . . . that's just the lighter moments. The funniest joke last night was a mobile phone going off at a funeral.

Pete visited a care home to see his old friend Harry and discovered he was dead -- an abusive woman with senile dementia had commandeered the room instead. This is bleak stuff.

The slapstick moments fail completely, because the tragedy overwhelms them. Sometimes, it's impossible to work out whether a scene is meant to be heartrending or farcical -- like Jenny's breakdown in a cafe.

'Pete's depressed and my babies are teenagers,' she wailed over her gluten-free chocolate cake.

The only reason to keep watching is Art Malik's unconvincing tycoon, Eddie.

Here's a bloke with a fleet of superyachts and A-list chums, who is happy to eat supermarket chicken every night. He must be a conman . . . but I can't switch off till I know for sure.

Great sitcoms can be pitch-dark... this was just gloomy

It's not hard to understand why Channel 4 took a risk on Flowers. Great sitcom can be pitch-dark -- think of Steptoe or Till Death. And it can be surreal and nightmarish, too, like Father Ted or The League Of Gentlemen. But Flowers falls far, far short of those classics. No wonder C4's execs seem to lack faith in it.

Review: Michael McIntyre tried to copy Ant and Dec

Trouble is, Ant and Dec do all this so much better -- and quicker and slicker. In the time it took Michael to thank the acrobats, with endless appeals for applause, the Geordie boys could have crammed in two extra sketches.

Maybe if Cuckoo had started life on BBC1, audiences would have grown to love it. There are funny moments, both when Greg Davies' efforts at parenting flounder, and when Taylor Lautner is hopelessly bemused by British customs. But a lot of viewers will have switched off wondering: 'What on earth was that supposed to be about?'