David Chater

This excruciating six-part "romantic comedy drama" lurches from the self-consciously contrived to the hideously mawkish. It revolves around three couples of the sort who only ever appear in bad television dramas. One couple (Amanda Abbington and Dean Lennox Kelly) is unhappily married because the husband is loveable but feckless. Another pair (Lucy Davis and Shaun Dooley) have been in love for ever, but she won't marry him because of what she sees every day at her work in a women's refuge. And the third couple is a smooth advertising type and his model girlfriend (Ralf Little and Miranda Raison). The actors have all been chosen because of their abundance of charm, but nothing they can do will redeem this facile rubbish.

In the second episode of Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson's comedy, the fictitious Radio 4 talk-show host, Gary Bellamy (Rhys Thomas) has left the studio to meet some of his listeners, ostensibly to find out what it means to be British. In reality it's just a good excuse to showcase a terrific stream of comic performances, each of which is brilliantly observed. Tonight, there's a hotel-management student who reveres the land of Shakespeare and Jimmy Savile, a posh architect from the Cotswolds who happens to be black, a brigadier and colonel representing the face of the modern British Army ("We're primarily concerned with building bridges") and, best of all, a poet and national treasure from Yorkshire who seems remarkably familiar.

This is the seventh series of Shameless and an eighth is already in the works. Sadly, it is not a cause for celebration. The only way to enjoy it nowadays is to stay focused on David Threlfall's performance and try not to remember how good the first series was all those years ago. Tonight, on the eve of his 50th birthday, Threlfall's character Frank Gallagher has met the new love of his life. She's a librarian who lights a flame in his soul, don't you know, and makes him feel as though he would like to become someone other than the job-shy, sponging waste of space that everyone knows him to be. She, for her part, is a Byron-spouting narcoleptic in search of adrenalin and excitement, who wants to wake up not knowing what the day has to offer. Like a soap opera straining after flamboyance, not a word of it rings true.

John Sullivan's 90-minute prequel to Only Fools and Horses turned out to be the wonderful surprise of the week. With no laughter track and a minimum of slapstick, it is very different in tone to Only Fools and Horses. Rather than going for broad laughter, it concentrates instead on an affair between the unhappily married Joan Trotter (Kellie Bright) and a local crook (Nicholas Lyndhurst) fresh out of prison. It is a simple and touching love story played out against the backdrop of a pre-Beatles Britain, when money was short and the chance to move into a high-rise tower block was seen as the epitome of luxury. Helped by a strong supporting cast that includes Phil Daniels and Shaun Dingwall, Rock & Chips works on its terms, and will explain much about why Del and Rodney turned out the way they did.

Bellamy's People is sensationally good. Reuniting Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson from The Fast Show and performed by a crack team of comic actors, the idea is that a self-satisfied young Radio 4 talkshow host, Gary Bellamy (Rhys Thomas), leaves his studio and goes walkabout to meet his listeners, who prove to be an astonishing variety of perfectly realised comic characters. They include a 23 stone (146 kg) man who never leaves his front room, an ageing rock impresario, a prim parish worker, an Asian community leader, a semi-reformed criminal and a couple of dotty aristocrats with a penchant for totalitarian regimes. Each character seems more accurate and colourful than the one before and the show relies entirely on observation rather than gags to generate its laughter.

Some of these half hours of live stand-up comedy are bound to be better than others, but this is one of the very best. It begins with a routine by the manic, semi-hinged Welshman Rhod Gilbert. The last time he was at the Apollo he had apoplexy on stage describing the unnecessary complications of buying a duvet. Fortunately, he hasn't calmed down one iota, and tonight he begins by mocking café life in rain-soaked Cardiff ("people have to throw lifebuoys to their bread rolls") before unleashing a tidal wave of frustration at the complexities of washing machines. He is followed by John Bishop, who could scarcely be more different. Deadpan, bewildered and resigned, he describes the difficulty of bringing up teenage boys. It's a brilliant half hour.

Victoria Wood does not appeal to everyone but she does have a large and devoted following - almost a cult - which includes my mother-in-law, whose enthusiasm is undimmed by dementia. "Christmas," says Wood, "can be a difficult time for those struggling with that bonnet-free wasteland between the last Lark Rise and the next Cranford" - and so she steps in to fill the gap with Lark Pies to Cranchesterford, the heartwarming story of a young girl who leaves her rural hamlet for a job in the Post and Potato Office. In among the sketches are personal-injury commercials, unlikely sporting events and a dance number in which the midriff bulge is given the Busby Berkeley treatment. She will be joined by long-time collaborator Julie Walters alongside Delia Smith and Torvill and Dean.

This year's Christmas special is set in the year 2039. Ben has turned grey. His son Michael has lost his hair, daughter Janey has put on weight and the living head of Roger sits in a glass bowl on the sideboard. Otherwise, it's business as usual, with the family reminiscing about Christmases past and looking back on "injuries, law suits and mental scars that therapy has yet to heal". In an impressively honest interview to mark My Family's 100th episode Zoë Wanamaker talked about the unevenness of the scripts. "You sometimes have to use all of your talent to make something that sticks in your craw sound OK," she said. But despite all their talent, they can't even begin to make this one sound OK.

The much-loved Royle Family is back for another Christmas special, so reserve your place on the sofa. In The Golden Eggcup, it's the wedding anniversary of Jim and Barbara (Ricky Tomlinson and Sue Johnston) and Antony (Ralf Little) makes a welcome return to the fold. Being a dutiful son - and the only one with a job - he provides the cash so that they can celebrate in style, but the crucial question is what they'll do with the money - blow it on the holiday of a lifetime or a buy a wall-to-wall HD television set. After the glorious, bittersweet episode The Queen of Sheba, The Royle Family has set itself impossibly high standards that combine acute observation and unforced humour with a deep humanity. Essential viewing.

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.