David Mitchell (I)

Ronnie Corbett is the very special guest on David Mitchell's team tonight. It's a chance for host Rob Brydon to try out his favourite Corbett impression on the real thing and also an opportunity for a very happy Lee Mack to fulfil a childhood dream.

Corbett's presence - small though it is - is a huge part of the show which also sees Julian Clary attempting to explain why he's got a unicorn in his garden and David discussing his unusual childhood friendship with a bucket.

The other two panelists, Sarah Millican and Holly Walsh, may be less well-known but in such legendary company as this they more than keep up their end of the banter - adding up to another perfectly breezy ­half-hour.

Often in this show a panellist manages, through artful stumbling, to make everyone else think that a true story is made-up nonsense. Much harder is to pick up a card and read a fabrication you've never seen before, then convince the assembled wits it happened. There's a solid-gold example of the latter tonight, though to say who pulls it off would of course spoil the point. Aside from that, it's a slow starter, but takes off when David Mitchell cross-examines Kevin Bridges over a horse the latter supposedly bought by mistake in Bulgaria. Also taking part, Prof Brian Cox, a giggly Keeley Hawes and Stephen Mangan.

Comedians ribbing each other about far-fetched tales - it's what Friday-night telly was made for. And this week's gathering of deceivers and doubters may be the sharpest yet. Joining chalk-and-cheese team captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack are Ruth Jones (of Gavin & Stacey fame), Jason Manford (The One Show) and comedians Jack Dee and Peter Serafinowicz. In short, every one's a winner. Tonight's best round involves a mystery guest called Ian. The question is, did he save Jones's tortoise from death, sell batteries to David Mitchell via eBay, or get attacked by schoolchildren alongside Manford? Finding out is a blast. Plus there's a new round where host Rob Brydon has a go at fooling the teams himself. But did he really once steal Catherine Zeta-Jones's dinner money?

Full marks to whoever booked the panellists on tonight's Would I Lie To You?. It's a solid gold line-up this week. Joining David Mitchell, Lee Mack and Rob Brydon are Ruth Jones, Jason Manford, Jack Dee and Peter Serafinowicz - taking a break from what is practically a full-time job of filling the Twitter-verse with surreal one-liners.

This week they're all bringing their best poker faces to some very tall tales involving Ray Charles, a tortoise, a human sausage, a cheese and onion sandwich, Lee Mack's life expectancy, and David Mitchell's battery-buying habits.

And Rob Brydon's getting in on the act as well with his own true or false questions - did he really once steal Catherine Zeta-Jones' lunch money?

The regeneration of the host of I'm Sorry I Haven't Got A Clue is complete: Jack Dee has finally fully transformed into the grouch we know and ... the grouch we know. Just A Minute returns next week, a handover Jack celebrated with a game entitled Just A Minim - "the teams' musical version of the longrunning wireless favourite hosted by Nicholas Parsons. I never miss him."

Earlier the teams had supplied us with some new definitions - internet is what the England team didn't do at the World Cup, asterisk is the chances of being hit by an asteroid and fallacy is "like a penis". The last gag was from David Mitchell - brilliant panel guest as ever, but I'm beginning to worry about him. Hasn't he got a home to go to? And if he has, does it contain a panel show in every room?

There's a whole clutch of matey comedians, including Rob Brydon and Lee Mack, who seem to do nothing much except appear in various combinations on comedy panel shows like this. Would I Lie to You?, however, an update on Call My Bluff, is the most enjoyable format. David Mitchell and Ruth Jones also appear - their trick seems to be to tell their tall stories with deceptive incompetence, which is why the biggest-seeming lies turn out to be true - except for when they don't.

Jonathan Ross's old slot is taken up this week by the fourth series of this jovial comedy panel show - a safe play by the BBC, as they figure out how best to plug the gap left by Ross. It's hosted by Rob Brydon, and tonight features Fern Britton, Richard E Grant, Martin Clunes and Sanjeev Bhaskar alongside regular captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack, as the two teams attempt to fool each other into believing a series of plausible lies.

The best factoid in this show is that when he appeared in an episode of Inspector Morse, Martin Clunes deliberately called him "Cheese Inspector". That's not even one of the fibs in this week's show - it's just one of the inbetween bits of banter that gets chucked in for free. And the return of this series ratchets up the laughter quotient of Friday nights on the BBC (and Martin Clunes' career, come to that) by roughly four million per cent.

It makes you realise that all those years Clunes has spent stomping around ­Cornwall as the grumpy Doc Martin, pretending to be Reggie Perrin or making ­documentaries about dogs have been a waste of his talents. What he should really have been doing is spending his time larking about with his mates on comedy panel shows because I've never seen him enjoy himself as much as he does here.

It all adds up to a brilliant start to the series with team captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack conjuring perfect comebacks out of thin air. Host Rob Brydon's impromptu impersonations add an extra coat of comedy emulsion to an already ­sparkling format. Tonight's other guests, Richard E Grant and Sanjeev Bhaskar put on their best butter-wouldn't-melt faces as they swear blind that they once rear-ended Michael Winner and made a hip-hop Hamlet. And is Fern Britton really a secret Morris Dancer?

That Mitchell and Webb Look review

David Mitchell and Robert Webb return with the latest series of their BBC comedy. Clever writing, but the first show is a bit hit and miss.

There are always moments of brilliance in the Mitchell And Webb weekly pot-shot at cultural mores. Last week it was David Mitchell shooting people who mispronounced basic words (hurrah!); this week it comes in The Gift Shop Sketch, which is a splendid parody of the constant trails and recaps you get in those threadbare US factual shows. And look out for Sketches We Couldn't Be Bothered To Write - a rather ingenious method of letting viewers' imaginations run riot.