David Brown (I)

In the months since Jonathan Creek was last on our screens, writer David Renwick seems to have spent a lot of time with the Sherlock Holmes casebook. Guest Paul McGann remarks on the "lingering air of Victorian mystery" and he's not kidding. From spooky stories about people succumbing at precisely predicted times of death to Jonathan discerning sidekick Joey Ross's (Sheridan Smith) current occupation from the redness of her fi ngertips, this one-off special has the defi nite feel of a Baker Street consulting room about it. Not that this makes it any less enjoyable. Indeed, all the hoodwinking and sleight of hand will keep you on your toes right up to the big reveal. Alan Davies remains extremely likeable as the duffel-coated sleuth, his delivery of those twisted lengths of explanatory detail being so good that he even gets the opportunity to do it twice over. The only flabbiness in the plot comes from the appearance of Adam Klaus: Stuart Milligan brings a wolfish smoothness to the part of the high-profile magician, but his subplot goes nowhere and detracts from an otherwise well-burnished brainteaser of an episode.

You can see why this Famous Five parody caused a stir when it was first broadcast as part of Channel 4's opening night back in 1982. Seeing a sacred cow like Enid Blyton slaughtered in such a fashion must have been a shock for some, but it remains a spot-on spoof. Peter Richardson and Pete Richens's script takes in the Five's casual sexism, their obsession with food and the clunky plot exposition of the books ("blah blah blah stolen plans, blah blah blah missing scientist") while gloriously ratcheting up the racial prejudices of the 1950s. Merciless, but jolly entertaining.

The laughometer gets its highest reading from host Michael McIntyre - he may be considered safe and orthodox, but his slickly engineered routines about HD-ready TVs, the awfulness of Argos and searching for a pen are a delight. Some may find his exaggerated theatrics a little grating, but it's hard to fault the material.

In a battle between Martin Ellingham and Peter Kingdom over who had the superior sedately paced Sunday-night coastal-set drama, the harrumphing GP would win hands down. Martin Clunes's Portwenn doc, with all his suppressed yearning, is a fully rounded presence, something it's strangely hard to say about Stephen Fry's Norfolk-based solicitor. Tonight's developments are a case in point. At the end of last week's fourth-series opener, long-suffering Louisa turned up at Martin's place looking very pregnant indeed. And it's no time at all before she's dealing with doctor Edith, who - as we also gleaned from episode one - has something of a history with Louisa's former fiance. You'd never find all this on a show like Kingdom, where romantic angst seems to be restricted to the supporting characters. So it's very nice to have Doc Martin back in the schedules, quietly but appealingly going about its business with a central relationship that the writers consistently find interesting ways to refresh.

Lynne Truss's sublime Brighton-set police drama pastiche returns for a six-part run. It's still 1957 and Sgt Brunswick remains the worst undercover operative around, regularly getting shot for his troubles. Yet he's attracted the attention of a tenacious crime reporter who wants to write about the ordinary heroic copper. But what will the Daily Clarion's finest make of an officer with 36 bullet-hole scars who thinks the idea of a criminal records system sounds like "girls' work"? As usual, the period detail and post-war patter impresses, but the whole thing is stolen by cockney-charlady-cum-crooked-mastermind Mrs Groynes (Samantha Spiro) who effortlessly shoehorns in such berserk but perspicacious declarations as, "well all this standing around jawing won't get the Rome Treaty ratified and change the course of European affairs irrevocably and for ever now, will it dears?"

The early-evening Radio 4 comedy in which Marcus Brigstocke encourages celebrities to venture outside their comfort zones transfers to TV, with Clive Anderson the first to try five fresh cultural experiences. The former barrister had not been recorded throwing caution to the wind at the time of going to press, but we're promised few changes to the programme's original format. Recently we've heard Phill Jupitus eating his first Findus crispy pancake, Joan Bakewell getting a beat-boxing lesson and Barry Cryer changing a baby's nappy - the result being an enjoyably less-splenetic version of Room 101, in which the guests do sometimes find pleasure in the very things they've been avoiding.

He's a man unaware of how out of kilter he is with the planet, but Will Smith has turned 35 and is concerned by his lack of achievement. Coming across like a more obsessive Adrian Mole, he's without savvy, disgruntled with his lot - and fearful at the thought of doing anything about it. Yet what can you expect from a person who never received birthday presents when he was growing up because his parents thought August was too close to Christmas?

Will Smith's considerable comic skill comes in releasing our inner geek and it's our job to decide how far we should go along with his diagnosis of what's gone wrong with the world. But come on - which one of us wouldn't be enraged by someone who couldn't put the Police Academy movies in order? Oh, so that'll be just me and Will then...

A second run for the deadpan comedy that's like Feedback from a warped alternative universe. The show manages to mangle radio formats into unusual shapes before presenting them in an almost credible fashion, and as co-presenter Jon Holmes tells Radio Times, series two boasts: 'Today introducing controversial waterboarding torture techniques to grill politicians; a gritty HBO remake of Gardeners' Question Time in the style of The Wire; a fan convention for The Archers in Las Vegas; and Oliver Stone's new radio drama Peston." And tonight, after David Miliband's successful 'appearances' in series one, an equally peculiar Ed Balls sounds off, while John Humphrys is replaced by a real pit bull. Newsreader and voice of gravitas Alice Arnold once again has the task of announcing all this with a straight face.