Danny Boyle

The long arm of the law finds its funnybone

Danny Boyle is among those revitalising the comedy cop show with Babylon.

Wossy's production team have really come up with the goods tonight, netting five sparkling guests who, between them, should please almost every part of the audience. Top of the bill is Danny Boyle, whose direction of the Olympics opening ceremony last summer propelled him from well-regarded filmmaker to cut-and-dried national treasure overnight. He'll be talking about that experience, as well as his latest movie, Trance, and his recently revealed plans to make a sequel to Trainspotting within the next few years. Fans of the director should savour the moment, as Boyle hardly ever gives TV interviews.

Following him, Deadwood star Ian McShane and Skins alumnus Nicholas Hoult drop in to discuss their new film, Jack the Giant Slayer (not a remake of the 1962 film, but basically Jack and the Beanstalk reworked with Hollywood levels of blood, guts and brouhaha).

Last but not least, Blur frontman Damon Albarn and 69-year-old soul hero Bobby Womack are on hand with live music from The Bravest Man in the Universe - the wonderful, strikingly poignant album they made together last year.

This was the year of Olympic memories - Danny Boyle's opening ceremony, the Queen ad-libbing with James Bond, a cascade of British Gold - but John Morton's comedy supplied the biggest laughs week after week. It was, in the words of Ian Fletcher, "all good".

Vic and Bob returned to our screens, with another one-off show for the birthday celebrations. Vic & Bob's Lucky Sexy Winners - a quiz show, at least technically - opened with our trouserless hosts sporting platform heels and dancing as ever, although this time literally, to the beat of their own drums. Then a cardboard cutout of Simon Cowell as drawn by Reeves atop a pair of human legs kicked a lever to activate the clock and guests Chelsee Healey, Thomas Turgoose and Eddie Izzard ("Occupation?" "Spinster") competed to answer questions such as "Where is Antony Worrall Thompson - the moistest of the TV chefs - housed when not on TV?" and win prizes that included an energy drink and some talcum powder in a jar ("In a jar, in a jar, in a jar!"). It occurred to me that, unless I blinked and missed it, Reeves and Mortimer were the only things missing (Harry Hill's TV Burp titles got a brief look-in) from the festival of bonkers Britishness that was the Olympics opening ceremony. Danny Boyle probably couldn't find a frame of their work from the moment The Smell Of ... kicked off that wouldn't have finally tipped the whole fabulous, precariously balanced thing over into outright frothing madness incomprehensible across the globe.

Like Hill, you either find them funny or you don't and the paltry resources of the written word cannot hope to transport you from the latter to the former camp. Even the news that AWT is housed in Glasgow University Hospital when not on TV may not sway you. But I laughed till I cried and begged whatever god is in charge of these things for a whole Lucky Sexy winning series. I type till then with fingers crossed.

With a certain sporting event looming, it's the last ever episode of this marvellous mockumentary. As the Olympic Deliverance Team prepare to hand over to the Live Team, last-minute panics still need resolving. The fireworks planned by Danny Boyle for the opening ceremony will trigger the Army's ground-to-air missiles. Charging stations for the official Olympic electric cars work so slowly, the entire fleet will soon be stationary. And the special "Big Bong" peal of church bells, supposed to ring nationwide, has so far attracted only two entries. Cue BlackBerry-addicted "branding guru" Siobhan (Jessica Hynes) salvaging the crisis by roping in a celebrity. Will she land Sting or settle for Aled Jones?

Just to add tension, three colleagues have applied for the same post-Games job, with the shortlist about to be announced. Come handover day, Lord Coe isn't around to make his planned speech, having been "called away to argue with animal rights groups about a sheep", so Ian (Hugh Bonneville) steps in. Can he make it a rousing send-off? And will his excruciating but rather moving romantic tension with PA Sally (Olivia Colman) be resolved? Smart, superbly played and painfully close-to-the-bone.

Granted, the recent debacle over employing security guards trumps fiction, but it's still sad to bid farewell to Twenty Twelve. That's principally because it's a comedy that brilliantly skewers both group-think idiocy and the personal rivalries inherent to all organisations. In the final episode, there are 10 days left until the Live Team takes over from the Deliverance crew, time enough for a difficult meeting with Danny Boyle's bruising fixer, Kevin Thingie, a competition to compose an Olympian peal of church bells and for the ever-elusive Seb Coe to be "called away to a last-minute argument".

No one was surprised when a member of the Olympic Deliverance Committee was shot in the foot last week. After all, they do it to themselves all the time. But this was an actual bullet from a real gun. As you would expect. the incident is smeared in a thick gloss of PR, when it's described as "a totally routine accident".

Meanwhile, bluff Nick "I can't help being from Yorkshire" Jowett takes command as everyone discusses Inclusivity Day. Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson makes a game cameo, Danny Boyle wants more nurses for the opening ceremony, Ian's PA is stolen by Sebastian Coe, though his replacement hits the ground running, and there's an excruciating tree planting ceremony. Hilarious.

Russell Brand & Danny Boyle to make football film?

Expect a film sometime soon from the award-winning director and the stand-up in his mid-thirties about the lower league football club.