Elizabeth Day (II)

Bill Bailey: 'Comedy is perceived as too Left wing'

Bill Bailey is known as a master of whimsy - but nowadays he has politics on the brain.

Generation rent finds its comic voice

Frustrated by the scarcity of meaty roles for women, Phoebe Waller-Bridge - 'the British Amy Schumer' - wrote and stars in Crashing, a new TV comedy for the way we live now.

If new years didn't exist, I would want to invent them just for the joy of seeing Brooker take the piss out of the preceding 12 months. He was on top acerbic form last week, describing Ed Miliband as a "human balloon animal" and saying that Isis "make al-Qaida look like Crowded House".

He also tried to explain the whole David-Cameron-cock-in-a-pig's-head allegation (never thought I'd write that sentence, but really enjoyed doing so) with reference to Brooker's own scripted comedy Black Mirror, which first aired in 2011 and opened with an episode in which a fictional prime minister must have sexual intercourse with a pig live on national television.

"To be honest, the whole thing left me, particularly, feeling a bit weirded out," Brooker said, before pointing out that the Cameron story had come from one single, uncorroborated source and might not be true, even if everyone wanted it to be.

Brooker was ably assisted by the incredible Philomena Cunk, who was on hand to offer her insights into topical issues such as "femininism" and the refugee crisis. In fact, the human tragedy born of the Syrian conflict was sensitively handled and the satirical humour was aimed exclusively at politicians and those in the media who, after seeing the horrific photo of toddler Aylan Kurdi washed up on a beach, stopped referring to those fleeing hardship as "a swarm" and came up with "a new twist of them being humans". It was all a very difficult line to tread and Screenwipe did it beautifully.

On a side note, the music used for this segment was the achingly gorgeous An Ending, a Beginning by Dustin O'Halloran, who is the man responsible for scoring the hit Amazon series Transparent.

Billionaire Boy was a New Year's Day treat on BBC One. Adapted from the children's book of the same name by David Walliams, it told the story of Joe Spud, whose father becomes an billionaire overnight after inventing a new type of toilet roll.

It was very well done - funny, smart and entertaining in the best tradition of classic family comedy films such as Richie Rich or Home Alone, and packed with excellent lines: when Joe commits a minor misdemeanour in the Spuds' new mansion, his father responds with: "Go to your rooms!"

The cast were brilliant, especially Elliot Sprakes in the title role. Catherine Tate was hilarious as the celebrity hand model Sapphire Diamond, Rebecca Front and James Fleet were effortlessly funny as put-upon teachers at Ruffington school (motto: "Doing the best we can"), Warwick Davis was a butler and Walliams himself made an appearance as Mrs Trafe, the world's worst dinner lady, whose offerings included onion mousse, cold pilchard soup and kidney custard pie.

The final instalment of Peep Show was, like all the other episodes of Peep Show leading up to this point, brilliant. It was made more brilliant by the continued underplaying of its own brilliance, as if everyone involved knows they're doing something hilarious but it would be a bit un-British to crow about it.

In this episode, Jez was struggling to keep pace with his drug-guzzling younger boyfriend and facing the prospect of his 40th birthday with some apprehension: "40 is basically 50 and 50 is dead". Mark, meanwhile, declared his love for April, but obviously it wasn't quite as straightforward as that, and by the end the El Dude brothers were alone again, sitting in their flat watching a nature documentary about the reintroduction of wolves into the wild. "What next?" muses Mark. "Bring back smallpox? We all had fun with the smallpox, didn't we? Is it time smallpox had a reboot?"

Farewell, then, Peep Show. I'll miss you.

The Kennedys was not, in fact, the soapy American biopic drama starring Katie Holmes as Jackie O, but a new family sitcom set in the 1970s. The opening episode was introduced by the 10-year-old Emma (Lucy Hutchison), a Star Wars-obsessed tomboy who witnesses her parents' attempts to host a newfangled, mysterious thing called "a dinner party".

Much hilarious japery is meant to ensue. But it's basically just a series of cliched jokes about the 70s. When Mrs Kennedy, played by the ever-brilliant Katherine Parkinson, says she intends to make a lasagne, there is the obligatory "pasta in it and not in a tin? That's madness!"

Of course, one of the guests turns up with a cheddar and pineapple hedgehog. There's a Space Hopper in the garden, a joke about a woman's breasts cushioning her fall and an exotic foodstuff called "garlic bread", which Emma's father tries to make out of sliced white Mother's Pride. If the past is a foreign country, this was the televisual equivalent of poking fun at Johnny Foreigner.

Still, it's a sitcom and probably doesn't aspire to be subtle or genre-busting. The Kennedys does what it says on the (pasta) tin and it's jolly and well acted. Probably worth sticking with for Katherine Parkinson alone.

You, Me and the Apocalypse imagines a near future when an asteroid on a direct collision course with Earth puts the world on the brink of imminent extinction. It is set in Slough, which, ever since The Office, has become a TV comedy byword for plodding mundanity and ironic hyper-normality. It's not the only reference You, Me... has to other television programmes - there are several scenes in a women's prison in New Mexico that bear more than a passing resemblance to Orange Is the New Black.

This aside, You, Me and the Apocalypse is an unexpected delight. I say unexpected because it's not every day you see Pauline Birds of a Feather Quirke co-starring alongside Rob St Elmo's Fire Lowe and the narrative is completely bonkers, incorporating as it does a WikiLeaks-style computer-hacking antagonist, an Italian nun and a foul-mouthed priest whose job it is to be a devil's advocate (literally) and argue against candidates for canonisation.

Like I said: totally batshit.

But it works, partly because the writing is tight and deft and funny and the acting excellent. Rob Lowe is especially good as the priest, Father Jude Sutton, and delivers all the best lines. At one point, he muses over why the phrase "Christ on a bike" might be offensive to Catholics.

"I think he'd be very likely to ride a bike," says Father Sutton. "He seems like that kind of a guy to me. What else would he show up in - a stretch hummer?"

It's a very promising first episode. I do feel a bit sorry for Slough though.

Mountain Goats, a new sitcom from BBC Scotland following the lives of a disparate bunch of mountain rescue volunteers, was on altogether more reassuring territory. If UnREAL were a drink it would be half a pint of tequila. Mountain Goats would be milky PG Tips with two sugars, delivered complete with canned laughter. The writing is sometimes sharp and funny ("You can't sort everything with violence, Jules. This is not The Muppets") but the acting is hammy. Still, it's got promise. And there's not a tin whistle in earshot, which has to count for something.

Over on Sky Atlantic, there were two more women with an ear for convincing, funny and unselfconscious dialogue. Last week saw the welcome return of Doll & Em, a sitcom written by real-life best friends Emily Mortimer and Dolly Wells who play exaggerated versions of themselves. The opening episode saw the duo retreat to a lighthouse to write a play.

The charm of Doll & Em lies in its minute and accurate observation of female friendship. There is one scene, in the back of a New York cab, when Doll congratulates Em for having hair that "looks French" before bemoaning the state of her own barnet in order to elicit a return compliment from Em, which is an understated masterclass in the way women work.