Christopher Stevens

W1A review

Senior managers at the BBC gave John Morton carte blanche to mock the organisation. Perhaps they believed this would be a parody of management culture in general. But from the first seconds, W1A signalled its merciless intentions.

Is W1A the BBC's most risky comedy ever?

This time, in W1A, Twnty Twelve's Ian Fletcher has the bigwigs at Broadcasting House in his sights - or as Hugh Bonnevile puts it, he aims to 'clarify, define, or re-define the core purpose of the BBC across all its functions'.

Review: It's more like Top Gear with geeks

An audience of maths students looked on, scribbling on their notepads. It was like Top Gear with geeks. Dara O Briain had the advantage of a degree in maths and theoretical physics, but guests Peter Serafinowicz and Kevin Bridges looked completely bewildered.

Inside No. 9 is scarily funny

Each half-hour playlet is a chiselled gem, as dark as ink and frighteningly funny.

The cutest sitcom on TV has been ruined by stroppy teen

Kids are not kids for long. That's part of the wonder of childhood... and it has evaporated from Outnumbered.

This package comedy is close to its final departure. There aren't many more laughs to be squeezed out of the ageing swingers or the gay hairdresser, and most of us are only watching for the promised cameo by Joan Collins: she's due to turn up as the Hotel Solano's glitzy chief exec.

But some of the performances are too good to miss. Tim Healy, as the cross-dressing dogsbody Lesley, was hilarious last night when his boss put him in charge for a day and warned: 'With great office comes great responsibility. Here are the keys to the vending machines.'

Power went to Lesley's head, which was missing its bouffant wig. He became a Little Hitler, sacking the staff and dragooning the guests' children to run the hotel; meanwhile, his wig had been washed up on the beach where it was mistaken for a decapitated head.

Lesley ought to try a beehive wig. It might give him extra stature.

Benidorm (ITV) started in 2007, which is odd as it feels like it's been dragging on for at least 20 years. Nothing changes: Mick and his mother-in-law Madge are still bickering, the staff are still ripping off the guests, and the karaoke never ends.

Half the jokes have been doing the rounds since the dawn of package holidays - towels on the sunbeds, foreign muck on the menus, grumpy customs men. But Benidorm has another tradition, of including a few very polished lines into the hackneyed script.

Just when you think you can't stomach another gay innuendo or boob joke, someone says something surreal and inventive. 'I'm sorry, I have to go now,' flounced hairdresser's assistant Liam. 'I have a nasal hair wax heater that is threatening to overboil.'

His boss, Kenneth, was in trouble with the hairdressing mafia, the Hafia. 'I'm going to wake up with a horse's head in my bed,' he fretted, 'with a permed mane.'

And while you're chuckling in surprise at that, the cast get back to the serious business of poolside flirting and toilet humour. Like the all-inclusive holiday and budget airlines, it's a formula that keeps us coming back.

Birds Of A Feather (ITV), which began in 1989, has been away from our screens for 15 years. The trio of smashing actresses who carry the show - Linda Robson, Pauline Quirke and Lesley Joseph - must have been preserved in aspic, because none of them looks any older than they did in the Nineties.

The big change here is that Birds was always a BBC comedy. After the sitcom's West End stage success, writers Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran approached the corporation and were told, implausibly, that Auntie's policy is never to do revivals.

That makes little sense, when you consider that the BBC's most popular drama, Doctor Who, lay dormant for more than a decade before being revived.

Anyway, it's the Beeb's loss, because Birds was as funny and edgy as ever. Sex-mad Dorian had reinvented herself as an erotic author called Foxey Cohen, Tracy was a single mum again and Sharon was still boiling with working-class indignation.

'Mr Cameron says we're all in this together,' she grumbled, 'so how come I never bump into him down by the bins?'

TV review: Birds of a Feather, Benidorm

Reviews of ITV sitcoms Birds of a Feather and Benidorm.

Birds Of A Feather, which began in 1989, has been away from our screens for 15 years. The trio of smashing actresses who carry the show - Linda Robson, Pauline Quirke and Lesley Joseph - must have been preserved in aspic, because none of them looks any older than they did in the Nineties.

The big change here is that Birds was always a BBC comedy. After the sitcom's West End stage success, writers Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran approached the corporation and were told, implausibly, that Auntie's policy is never to do revivals.

That makes little sense, when you consider that the BBC's most popular drama, Doctor Who, lay dormant for more than a decade before being revived.

Anyway, it's the Beeb's loss, because Birds was as funny and edgy as ever. Sex-mad Dorian had reinvented herself as an erotic author called Foxey Cohen, Tracy was a single mum again and Sharon was still boiling with working-class indignation.

'Mr Cameron says we're all in this together,' she grumbled, 'so how come I never bump into him down by the bins?'