David Stubbs (II)

Set in Russia in 1917 and based on the short stories of Mikhail Bulgakov, this might seem like a bleak prospect but far from it; starring Daniel Radcliffe as a doctor working in a small village at the start of the revolution and Jon Hamm as his older self in the Stalin era, this is very funny indeed in its bleakly provincial way, with echoes of The Irish RM and Blackadder. "We have a lot of fun round here," one of Radcliffe's new colleagues promises him on arrival. "Only last month I heard a very amusing anecdote." Take his word for it.

Glory of glories, we finally get to hear Kingsley's music tonight, as his girlfriend pressures him into trying out an open-mic night. Unfortunately, his sub-Radiohead stylings are undermined by a strange thing he insists on doing with his neck. Meanwhile, Oregon reveals a surprisingly tuneful aptitude and Kingsley invites her to join forces with him, despite her singer-songwritery warblings being at odds with his own morose style. Elsewhere, Josie keeps up the pretence of going to her seminars each day, though on-street sightings of her lead the house to the wrong conclusion.

The second series of this sitcom has intimations of a soap; despite being set in the world of espionage, this takes a back seat to day-to-day romantic and family intrigues. A strong cast is headed by Darren Boyd as Tim, whose precocious son Marcus tonight makes his aggressive bid to become school president. Mark Heap is the hapless headmaster, Miles Jupp plays the appalling Owen and Robert Lindsay also features, looking like Jon Culshaw impersonating Alan Sugar. A running joke involving a hooded interrogee is the highlight of this week's silliness.

Following a malfunction with an Ikea-style flatpack ("I knew those white plastic bits were important!"), the crew find themselves catapulted back to the year AD23 on Earth, where they must make a 4,000-mile trek to India to find the lemons they'll need to make a battery, and in so doing run into a bearded figure who may or may not be Christ on his travels. There remains a hapless amiability about these comedic timeservers, even if it does feel as if, laugh-wise, we are stranded in 1988.

Starring Sarah Alexander as Gemma, a divorced mum, and Neil Morrissey as her ex-husband, now shacked up with a stern eastern European woman, it may be too early to judge this new sitcom made by an all-female team of writers and producers. Yet the lack of a laugh track is ominously matched by a lack of laughs in this opener, with script and set pieces feeling contrived, as Gemma is caught between dating a leery dad from the school run and experiencing a frisson of desire for her son's best friend.

Tragedy hits the cul-de-sac tonight with the sudden loss of one of its residents, but it's a tribute to the resilience of Sarah Hooper's amiable series that it does not miss a beat, or suffer a plunge in tone, as it handles the funeral and aftermath. Equally devastating is news about the demolition of the ice rink, inadvertently revealed by the indiscreet vicar. A cast of old hands, from Bobby Ball to Paula Wilcox, ably handle the material, delivered with the very antithesis of EastEnders' morose sturm und drang.

A well-worn spoof format, with roving reporters unearthing grainy footage of lookalikes cavorting riotously in the guise of the rich and famous. So, we see Camilla and Kate getting drunk in a studio, Simon Cowell sitting on a toilet seat carefully layered with black loo paper and Prince William at an all-night garage, in an abysmal scene featuring a turbanned sales clerk who is a throwback to Amusing Asian stereotypes of the 70s. If you love the worst elements of BBC3, you'll love this. The rest of you will not.

This new sitcom boasts a prestigious cast, including Sally Phillips and Tom Conti, and a strong premise with lots of contemporary relevance - Phillips is sacked from her job after a violent clash with a co-worker, meaning that she and her family, including her useless "entrepreneur" of a husband - must move back in with her ageing parents in Kettering. All of this may yet yield something good, but this opening episode is clunky, cardboard stuff in the main that fails to make the leap from paper to screen. There's no laugh track but for all we know there could have been a primed studio audience watching who simply failed to chuckle throughout.

It's about time that someone devised a lighthearted panel show involving a bunch of British comedians - and, thankfully, Channel 4 have stepped in to fill the gaping void with this new series. Hosted by Griff Rhys Jones, with Marcus Brigstocke and Charlie Baker as regular captains, it is, as Jones admits, a "nostalgia fest", in which the teams are presented with clips of archive news footage from decades past, with all their attendant horrors of industrial strife and terrible haircuts, and attempt to show off their memories of current affairs past - both momentous and trivial.

In the 70s, audiences laughed in appreciative recognition as Mike Yarwood impersonated a range of public characters, even including trade union leaders. With latterday cultural fragmentation and the thin spread of increasingly nondescript "celebrities", the job of an impressions show such as this, starring Morgana Robinson and Terry Mynott, becomes all the harder. It is telling that they often have to announce who it is they're doing. Still, this is as capable as could be expected; in the first episode, Bear Grylls tries out his survival skills in the suburbs, while David Attenborough studies at close hand the remarkable animal that is Frankie Boyle.