David Mitchell (I)

David Mitchell is sandwiched between two TV giants this week. Literally. Pointless's Richard Osman and The Inbetweeners' Greg Davies are both about 6ft 8 in tall where Mitchell is a good ten inches shorter.

Osman's dry wit has won him a cult following among daytime viewers but given the wider platform of primetime TV, it turns out he's genuine comedy gold. His first attempt to bamboozle his opponents involves a Cluedo-esque story about burying a badger with the Banker from Deal or No Deal. It leaves his fellow panellists crying with laughter. Patsy Kensit has her comedy moments too, though. When asked rhetorically by a straightfaced Osman, "You're not an actress, are you, Patsy?" she swiftly replies: "A lot of people would say no."

In the remainder of the show Bob Mortimer insists he can split an apple with his bare hands, while Davies reveals he is the schoolboy creator of the "Snorkel Parka Music Practice Room" game.

The joy of this series is the way it veers into comic byways. For instance, when Gabby Logan claims she throws things across the room at night to remind her of things to do in the morning, the discussion spins off into the question of whether or not she has slept with her team captain, David Mitchell. (He's on masterful comic form, but then, when isn't he?)

The "This is my..." round is genuinely harder to guess than usual: is mystery-man Kevin an EastEnders superfan who changed his name to Albert Square, Christian Jessen's surgeon or Lee's bum double from Not Going Out? Other tangents include an impression of the Alien stomach-burst scene from Rob Brydon.

Ah, Des O'Connor. Indefatigable crooner, Morecambe and Wise foil, chat-show host and borderline national treasure. Who knew he's daft enough to eat cat food by accident? Or is he? Maybe his long, peculiar story about how he dined on this strange dish in a holiday villa is all nonsense.

O'Connor, looking as bronzed as a 70s sideboard, is a game contestant on Lee Mack's team, and quickly gets into the spirit of the show after a giggly start. Meanwhile, on David Mitchell's team, Rhod Gilbert regales us with an account of the acute trauma he suffered at an airport.

And comic actress Sally Phillips (Smack the Pony, Miranda) apparently plays a texting-game with her husband while he's at the swimming baths. Worse, she once rode her uncle's mobility scooter with disastrous consequences. Perhaps. It's a great show, and what Friday nights are for.

There's a sad story from Richard Bacon: when he worked in McDonald's his girlfriend joined the queue for his till and dumped him when she reached the counter.

Of course, it could be complete tosh and the fun lies in the inquisition. As Bacon is on David Mitchell's team that means he's extensively quizzed by Lee Mack, backed by Clare Balding and a giggly Miranda Hart. And Balding is entertainingly cruel when Bacon reels off some facts about the cooking times of burgers.

Also, Dale Winton reveals how, as a child, instead of a comfort blanket or a teddy bear, he slept with a potato, while Hart insists she was a judge at the Identical Twins of the Year Award.

"This is a horrible stupid game!" moans David Mitchell towards the end of tonight's episode. "Whatever we say, if we get it wrong, we'll look like we've believed something ridiculous." Yes, that's the general drift: anecdotes and personal habits so far-fetched we refuse to believe they're true, though some must be.

Did Richard Madeley really wake up naked in a cupboard one Christmas morning, holding two cans of spray snow? Do pigeons nest using clippings from Kate Humble's hair? As the controversies rage, they're all leading up to the priceless sparring between Mitchell and rival captain Lee Mack. This week's battleground: pens.

The best comedy of the week was to be found over on CBBC, where series four of Horrible Histories made its debut (confusingly, BBC1 is currently showing series two).

Based on the cheerfully bloodthirsty books by Terry Deary and Martin Brown, it plays a bit like Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time, if you replaced the visiting professor of history from Queen's College, Oxford, with a talking rat making jokes about wee.

There have been plenty of bloody revolutions featured in Horrible Histories, but the team's most recent coup was to reunite The League of Gentlemen for the first time in a bronze age. Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith turned up as craven Hollywood execs keen to panel-beat the messy lives of historical figures into award-bait biopics, and while Gatiss's American accent was pretty duff, the bickering spark between the three gentlemen remained.

Recruiting the league should not distract from the tireless efforts of the core cast, particularly Jim Howick, who has matured from being an off-model David Mitchell into a gifted comic actor in his own right. But ultimately, the highlight of this first salvo of new shows was a prancing Charles Darwin explaining the ch-ch-changes of evolutionary theory via an exquisite David Bowie pastiche. Horribly good.

While some panel shows are having trouble finding their footing, Would I Lie To You? just seems to keep going from strength to strength.

Rob Brydon, David Mitchell and Lee Mack seem to make a perfect team. There's so many angles for them to play with: Mitchell's poshness verses Mack's working class background; Mitchell's southerness and Mack's northerness; Mitchell and Mack's Englishness verses Brydon's Welshness, and so on.

There is one significant change to this new series, however, that being the show is now on before the watershed. This, for me, is a worry. You may remember that this happened to QI when it moved to BBC One, which ended up as a failure and resulted in QI moving back...

However, it would seem that it's survived this changed. The show seems to be just as funny as ever, especially the bit when Mack trying to claim that his ex-girlfriend's names spell out the world "Bermuda". The guests, Alexander Armstrong, Mel Giedroyc, Alex Jones and Chris Tarrant, provided much amusement too.

WILTY remains fresh enough to stake a claim as the funniest panel show on TV.

It helps that the team captains are perfect in their roles, each bringing a specific style of humour to proceedings: David Mitchell's logical dissection of someone's story can sometimes get wearisome, but usually it's a delight to see him analyse things with such comical scrutiny; while opponent Lee Mack plays looser with the rules and manages to create a feeling of uncertainty because he adopts a level of ineptness in his truth-telling that might sometimes be a double-bluff. There's also comedy mined from how middle-class southerner Mitchell and working class northerner Mack (now that's a double-act name, Robert Webb!) are from different backgrounds and upbringings.

The only problem facing WILTY is that, as time goes on, you wonder if Mitchell and Mack will run out of stories that are sufficiently funny/bizarre enough to sound false. Not that the show relies on their stories alone, but I hope they each have good anecdotes left to squeeze out before everything they say becomes a lie because they've exhausted the truth. This is a problem that doesn't affect the rotation of guests, thankfully.

Now in its sixth series, WILTY? remains fresh enough to stake a claim as the funniest panel show on TV. This is probably because it's more of a parlour gameshow than most others in the genre-which are often quiz-based because it's easier to attach scripted jokes to that format. WILTY?'s more like Call My Bluff, only with humorous anecdotes replacing esoteric words. Two teams of three celebrities tell each other personal stories (sometimes with the aid of props) in order to trick the opposing side into thinking the yarn is gospel truth or a barefaced lie. More often than not, this makes for a highly amusing half-hour of trickery and repartee.

It helps that the team captains are perfect in their roles, each bringing a specific style of humour to proceedings: David Mitchell's logical dissection of someone's story can sometimes get wearisome, but usually it's a delight to see him analyse things with such comical scrutiny; while opponent Lee Mack plays looser with the rules and manages to create a feeling of uncertainty because he adopts a level of ineptness in his truth-telling that might sometimes be a double-bluff. There's also comedy mined from how middle-class southerner Mitchell and working class northerner Mack (now that's a double-act name, Robert Webb!) are from different backgrounds and upbringings.

The only problem facing WILTY? is that, as time goes on, you wonder if Mitchell and Mack will run out of stories that are sufficiently funny/bizarre enough to work. Not that the show relies on their stories alone, but I hope they each have good anecdotes left to squeeze out before everything they say becomes a lie because they've exhausted the truth. This is a problem that doesn't affect the rotation of guests, thankfully.

If you were thinking Friday nights had become a little joyless lately, here's good news. The best panel shows around are back to make BBC1's end-of-week comedy desert bloom again.

First, Rob Brydon wheels his festival of half-truths, fantasy and implausible facts back into view. It's in a new, pre-watershed time slot, which means some of the more colourful exchanges between team captains Lee Mack and David Mitchell will be reined in. But their exaggerated oik/toff banter should still be one of the funniest things on TV.