David Mitchell (I)

Did Larry Lamb really once run a market stall selling hats for dogs? It was the 1960s. It was Harlow. Canine millinery was massive, he insists. True or not, from now on it'll be hard to watch his evil EastEnders' alter-ego Archie Mitchell without conjuring up an image of him lovingly tying a bonnet on to a pug. It's absurd revelations like that one which make this game such a joy.

As series three starts, Rob Brydon takes over from Angus Deayton as host - completing a dream team alongside captains Lee Mack and David Mitchell.

Comedy panel shows are, of course, only as good as the quality of the regulars and guests. This one - in which players guess whether incredible facts and embarrassing personal tales are true or false - has invited the splendid Rob Brydon to host its third series. And, with team captains Lee Mack and David Mitchell, fun is guaranteed.

Say hello to a new batch of TV's most reliably funny and likeable panel show. Tonight's posers include whether stand-up Russell Howard used to wear underpants on his head as an anti-acne gambit and whether EastEnders star Larry Lamb once ran a market stall that sold hats for dogs. In case you're thinking that both things are clearly absurd, bear in mind that everything on the show is clearly absurd and could never have happened - yet some of it did. This series, Angus Deayton has given way to Rob Brydon as host, but the show's beating heart remains David Mitchell. He rules it as his domain; the others just make up the numbers. Tonight, Mitchell voices firm views on castles, crying and working at McDonald's.

'I've got some crystal meth in the fridge,' piped up posh Caroline at a Women's Guild drugs talk in the village hall during the painful Jam & Jerusalem). 'I actually prefer it to Dom Perignon!' This was Jennifer Saunders saving the best joke for herself, even though Caroline is only a bit part. Yes, seriously, that was the best joke.

Jam And Jerusalem is so relentlessly rubbish it actually made me suspect that I'd been on crystal meth when finding Absolutely Fabulous so funny back in the day. Because it's almost impossible to believe this bumpkinbaiting effort, which might as well be called Aren't Country Folk Daft?, is the work of the same person. La Saunders must have been sniffing way too much manure in her country retreat to imagine that J&J is fit for anything other than mulching out as a makeweight repeat on G.O.L.D.

It's almost painful to watch the likes of Sue Johnston and David Mitchell work their socks off to inject something passing for life into their cardboard cut-out characters. And the world can surely live without Dawn French contributing yet another variation on her busty yokel simpleton routine, though admittedly she does do gumby with a certain gusto.

Poor Angus Deayton has been dropped again. Rob Brydon steps into his shoes and very good he is too (much better than AD, who treated it as if he had somehow turned back time and was on the set of HIGNFY). Also good are the team captains: David Mitchell's natural habitat is the panel show and Lee Mack is naturally funny. Tonight's guests are Jo Brand and Russell Howard, providing back-up laughs, and Carol 'whaat now?' Vorderman and Larry 'do something about your son' Lamb are the straight men. It's never hilarious but it's always funny and less annoying than Mock The Week, so everyone should be glad to see it back.

Jennifer Saunders's cosy West Country WI sitcom returns for its third run. Tonight's series-opener sees the Clatterford Guild oppose a local barn conversion - until they hear rumours that it's to house a certain celebrity. The whimsical wit may split sofa opinion, but there's no doubting the quality of the cast, which is a Who's Who of Britcom: Sue Johnston (The Royle Family), David Mitchell (Peep Show), Sally Phillips (Smack the Pony), Pauline McLynn (Father Ted) and, of course, Saunders's comedy partner Dawn French.

Jennifer Saunders's strange tales of bucolic madness and comic grotesques, a sort of The League of Ladies as opposed to The League of Gentlemen, returns briefly for a three-part series. Nothing much has changed in Clatterford, where everyone is bonkers, particularly the members of the local women's guild. These include widowed Sal (Sue Johnston) who is trying and failing to cut down on her drinking, though she's roused from her frequent stupors when she learns that developers are converting a barn at the bottom of her garden. Rumour has it that it's for the suave Charles Dance, which sends most of the women into a frenzy of lust. But Sal is determined to put up a fight, despite the objections of her straitlaced son (played by David Mitchell), who fears she will damage his prospects of becoming a Lib Dem MP. It's a silly little tale full of comedy drunkenness and low farce - there's even a subplot about the local vicar apparently behaving disreputably. But daft as J&J is, there's still something oddly endearing about it.

Saints be praised! Sunday night television is saved by the return of Jennifer Saunders's fabulous comedy centring on the activities of the Clatterford Womens' Guild. It's brilliant, gentle stuff, but cut with a sense of anarchy that you'd expect from Saunders's writing. Sue Johnston, Dawn French and Pauline McLynn are all back, with great support from Rosie Cavaliero, David Mitchell and
Maggie Steed, amongst others. This first hour long episode of three has the villagers getting flustered over a planning application - then they find out it might be for Charles Dance...

Suddenly, TV about TV is all the rage. Harry Hill's TV Burp may be off air for now, but next week BBC1 plans a new Telly Addicts-style quiz show called As Seen on TV. Meanwhile, this Channel 4 offering promises to be more left-field. Anyone who's seen Charlie Brooker's withering take on our nation's television, courtesy of BBC4's Screenwipe and Newswipe series, will know what to expect: cruel clips, ingenious put-downs and vented spleen, only this time in a panel-game format. When RT went to press, the show hadn't yet been recorded and the guests were unconfirmed (we're promised David Mitchell and Frank Skinner later in the series), but with Brooker in the driving seat, it should be worth a look.

If it hadn't been such a deathly week on the box, I might never have seen The Inbetweeners. I would never have seen it because it's a horrible title that implies a reality show about pre-op transsexuals, and because it's billed as a comedy series. It turned out to be Grange Hill with irony and swearing. The Inbetweeners are those awkward years betwixt kid and adolescent, that moment when you've just been given puberty but haven't learnt how to play it yet. In tele­vision terms, it's that gap between Torchwood and Skins, a vehicle for actors who look younger than they are.

What was astonishing was that it made me laugh. Not just once but quite a lot, repeatedly. The person I share my so-called life with put her head round the door and asked what that terrible noise was. Just me laughing, dear. "Well, watch something else, you're frightening the dog." On the face of it, there's nothing about The Inbetweeners that singles it out for mirth. The acting is junior-drama-school standard: loads of enthusiasm, little skill. The setup of a public schoolboy dumped into a comprehensive is hardly brilliant, but the script is tight and witty and filthy and doesn't sag. I think the key to it being sort of brilliant is that all TV comedians have a relentless arrested development and are pitifully juvenile. So when you see real adolescents telling jokes and being disgusting, it turns out to be actually funny. The main character, the public schoolboy, is a Mini-Me version of David Mitchell.

The rest of the cast are childish impressions of most of the celebrity guests on jokey quiz shows, which perhaps proves that comedy really is a young person's game, the younger the better. And just as youth is wasted on the young, so jokes are pathetic on the middle-aged.