David Brown (I)

The longer it goes on, the more Reggie Perrin feels like a sad, slightly surreal drama that's become trapped in the body of an old-fashioned sitcom. Martin Clunes manages to hide the joins by making the most embittered, world-weary lines come across as faintly lovable: "Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly," muses Reggie in tonight's instalment, "Modern man gotta eat his own entrails." It's one of several lines that jump out at you. Reggie's experiment with bailing out of his misery-inducing career isn't going well: "That's the trouble with living for the moment, isn't it?" he observes. "It b****rs up the next moment." His version of living for the moment involves oil painting, therapy (with daffy Sue from Groomtech) and baking bread. Meanwhile, at Groomtech, changes are afoot, giving Jim Howick as Anthony a chance to shine.

By turns affectionate, biting and poignant, this remains one of the finest sketch shows of all time. Meticulously crafted gems include the naïve schoolgirl who decides to swim the Channel, regular updates from shabby soap Acorn Antiques, plus a Coronation Street parody (with Wood as a startlingly accurate Ena Sharples). So it's heartening to see it back in the schedules - part of a season celebrating Wood's career. Tonight we also get dinnerladies, the rarely repeated Mens Sana in Thingummy Doodah (from a 1989 series of one-off sitcoms), plus a 1992 Christmas special.

Ever since its debut in 1973, Roy Clarke's genial sitcom has revolved around henpecked husbands and embittered wives, so it's only fitting that the climax should concern itself with a wedding. The occasion allows for a gathering of the major characters including - through the use of some canny editing - Truly and Clegg, both of whom have rarely been seen outside of their homes of late. Plus we also get a resolution to the saga of Howard and Pearl, whose marital strife has dominated this last run of episodes. But as a series finale, it lacks the required sense of poignancy, mainly because it wasn't known for sure at the time of filming that there were to be no further outings. And Summer Wine can do touching when required - long-standing devotees will recall Compo's funeral and the trip to Dunkirk, for instance. These are the fans who'll be left wishing Clarke had been given the opportunity to pen a more fitting send-off.

Poet Ian McMillan pays tribute to the pastoral sitcom that ends this evening on BBC1. Most of its long-standing characters have moved on to that tin bath in the sky, but Summer Wine has managed to carry on regardless until the axe fell in 2010. The line-up changed but that didn't stop the wry philosophising and gags about battleaxes and weak-willed men in episodes that still attract a respectable four million viewers. Here, McMillan ventures behind the scenes with writer Roy Clarke (scribe of all 295 instalments) and gets to chat with present cast members. There's also archive interview footage of the late Bill Owen and Kathy Staff, who provided many fondly remembered moments (most of which involved buckets of water, ladders and broom handles) as welly-wearing Compo and wrinkly-stockinged Nora Batty.

We've come a long way since the suburban simplicity of series one, but Vera (Anne Reid) and Irene (Maureen Lipman) haven't lost their knack for making mischief. So when Irene boasts about her new life in Australia, filled with fabulous weather, delicious wine and a handsome suitor, Vera suspects she's embellishing the truth just a little bit. Not that she has time to dwell on such matters, as her own happy existence at the trailer park is under threat. Selfish daughter Karen and Karen's offspring Sabrina look set to move in with her - methinks the nib of that fountain pen will come in for some heavy punishment.

The adorable Moss (Richard Ayoade) goes from loser to schmoozer when a string of victories on TV's Countdown gains him admittance to a secret, exclusive club where men in jam-jar specs, checked shirts and fabric ties are fawned over by scantily clad women. Lunatic flights of fancy are what this series does best and Moss's experiences in this Bizarro-style universe don't disappoint. Sure, the typically odd twists of fate that afflict his luckless colleagues Jen (Katherine Parkinson) and Roy (Chris O'Dowd) back in the real world feel tacked on, but the sight of Moss playing the urban "Street Countdown" around burning braziers, a baying mob and wire fencing is a winningly loopy one. I can certainly see his clear-eyed threat to a slang-talking opponent of "I came here to drink milk and kick ass... and I've just finished my milk" finding its way on to geek chic T-shirts.

He may be seen as a surprise choice to co-host The One Show, but Jason Manford has a homeliness and likeability that should suit the early-evening BBC1 crowd. Obviously his act here is post-watershed stuff (jokes centred around the groin area), but the way he banters rather than spars with his heartland audience at Manchester's Apollo Theatre is a winning tactic and immediately puts them at their ease. The topics he covers - driving lessons, childhood fears and funny things your dad says - inevitably invite comparisons with Peter Kay, but Manford feels the less nostalgic of the two. Some may regard his laid-back style as lacking edge, but it must take a lot of practice to appear so relaxed.

Ian Hislop puts it well when he says satire's job is to ridicule "vice, folly and humbug". He also argues that it works best when politicians are particularly divisive, hence Spitting Image's success at the height of the Thatcher years and Tina Fey's Sarah Palin in the 2008 American election campaign. It's one of the many good points made in a documentary that makes excellent use of David Frost's cachet on both sides of the Atlantic. So sit through the umpteenth showing of Bernard Levin being punched on TW3 in order to also see some insightful interviews with those who have impersonated our leaders, namely Rory Bremner (Tony Blair), Chevy Chase (Gerald Ford) and Will Ferrell (George W Bush), who all consider the extent to which impressions tarnish the reputations of people in high office.

The post-Watergate interviews between David Frost and Richard Nixon were first dramatised back in 2006 with Michael Sheen as the jet-setting talk-show host. So who better than Sheen to celebrate Frost's five decades in the media on both sides of the Atlantic in this one-off documentary? We hear from Frost himself who recalls a career that takes in That Was the Week That Was, The Frost Report and TV-am, while friends and colleagues, including Michael Parkinson and Ronnie Corbett, give their verdict on the only person to have interviewed the last seven US Presidents. The catchphrase may be much mimicked, and the softly-softly approach of more recent ventures like Breakfast with Frost has been criticised by some, but there's no denying the staying power of this giant of broadcasting.

Marc Wootton may be a skilled improviser, but he sometimes picks uneasy targets. The biggest laughs again come from documentary maker Brendan Allen, who wickedly tests the patience of Jeff Schwilk, a minuteman defending America's borders from illegals. But Shirley Ghostman's exploitation of her workforce is cruel - seeing pomposity pricked is one thing, urging a woman staffing a psychic hotline to threaten a caller with suicide is another. Then along comes mattress salesman Neil Leeds, who's obviously never met a camera he doesn't like. By the end of his encounter with wannabe actor Gary Garner, it's hard to know which one's the caricature.