Dawn French

After a shaky start, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders have found their radio feet and now provide a top quality show. There's less emphasis on their old records and more freedom to get on with what they do best - bounce off one another to the point of gentle anarchy.

Their most successful feature has been talking with their own mothers on air - there was no doubting where those comedy genes came from - and the familial baton is picked up today by guest Matt Lucas with his mum.

Apparently it's 20 years since Absolutely Fabulous burst on to our TVs. How can that be when it only feels like five minutes?

But at least it's an excuse for Jennifer Saunders to chat to her chums about the decade when comedy became the new rock 'n' roll and the alternative became the norm.

Reminiscing with her comedy partner Dawn French and hubby Ade Edmondson, the show gets off to an awkward start. Interviewer isn't a role that suits Jennifer and like the decade itself, this two-hour special only gets going at the midway point.

Clips of The League Of Gentlemen, The Royle Family and The Fast Show make a great case for a 90s revival.

And when Jen catches up with Joanna Lumley, there are hints that another series of Ab Fab might be on the cards.

Dawn French loving life after divorcing Lenny Henry

Looking out at the stunning St Catherine's Castle, Dawn French sat behind her desk in her sunny office on the Cornish coast and reflected on the phone call she'd just ended.

Dawn French & Caroline Aherne for Loose Women?

Dawn French and Caroline Aherne and ex-Corrie fave Sally Lindsay are three of the stars being wooed by bosses looking to replace Kate Thornton and Zoe Tyler on Loose Women.

Dawn French reveals reasons behind her weight loss

She stunned fans earlier this month when she stepped out looking noticeably slimmer. And now Dawn French has revealed the reasons behind her astonishing four-and-a-half stone weight loss.

Dawn French is dating again and open to marrying again

Comedian Dawn French has revealed her lovelife is back on track after her heartbreaking marriage break-up from Lenny Henry.

French took months to decide over Henry split

Dawn French spent months deliberating over whether she should end her marriage to Lenny Henry as they battled to salvage the relationship.

Dawn French loses five stone in a year & that's no joke

Dawn French, who once tipped the scales at 19 stone, looked a new woman at an awards ceremony in London.

This gem from last year was executive produced by Hugo Blick, the man behind BBC2's mighty thriller The Shadow Line. However, if you come to Roger and Val expecting dark violence and crushing suspense, you'll be terribly disappointed. It's more like Blick's previous series Marion & Geoff or Sensitive Skin, a muted, micro-observed domestic drama that has enough funny and absurd moments to qualify as sitcom, even if that tag feels all wrong. Alfred Molina and Dawn French are superb as a devoted but prickly married couple with a tragedy in their past that only emerges via hints over the course of the series. The plotting is understated, to put it mildly (tonight's opener is taken up with hunting for the guarantee for a broken vacuum cleaner), but also sweet, funny and very sad. If you missed it first time round, record the whole series - you won't regret it.

And now a blasphemous confession: Psychoville (BBC2) isn't for me. It's comedy horror for the Ocado demographic, as scary as finding your delivery man has broken the bottle of balsamic vinegar en route, a gross-out as entertaining as a commodified trick-or-treat soiree in the suburbs. A clown with Down's syndrome, anyone? Dawn French pasting mashed swede into a woman's paralysed mouth? An officious librarian haunted by a dancing spectre? Thanks, but no.

Psychoville warrants comparison with Gigglebiz, Justin Fletcher's sometimes scary sketch show. Think of Fletcher's truly menacing Dinah Lady or his crazed fitness fanatic Keith Fit. Genuinely terrifying - and with a punchline rate that Psychoville's mighty writers can only look on and despair. And that's on CBeebies. Mind you, I did like the way French got stabbed with a pencil. She'd been asking for that.