Euan Ferguson

Disappointment of the week was the Armstrong and Miller sitcom Felix and Murdo. Written not by them but by "comedy legend" Simon Nye, which should have warned me - didn't he do Men Behaving Badly? Uurgh. It was about thick poshos during London's first (1908) Olympics and could have offered much. Given what the writers of 2012 managed to do last year with an Olympics that hasn't happened - ie make the funniest sitcom of the year - it should have been easy to win at least a smile from this concept. Nope. Scatological without being wittily so. Stereotypical without being wittily so. Um... terrible without having any redeeming features. The paid audience laughed until they stopped. Poor Ben and Xander: I do hope they didn't actually watch it.

This much I know: Jimmy Carr

The comedian, 39, on being a fundamentalist atheist and Channel 4's big balls.

Black Mirror, on a full week ago today but I insist on mentioning it, was brilliant. You couldn't get further away, for the next two Sunday nights, from Downton. Thank God. Rory Kinnear, as the PM who had to (after almost the most deranged twist yet in the mind of writer Charlie Brooker, what fun he must have had in the three minutes after thinking of it) - there's no way round this, "shag a pig on live TV to save the life of the kidnapped princess" and director Otto Bathurst somehow imbued the dreadful, dreadful act with... dignity. Stoicism, then, or a kind of elevated bathos. The whole thing, perfectly shot and acted, said a lot about Twitter and the cyberspace "hive mind", but it said more, near the end, about humanity.

This gloriously mad premise had, of course, the world wanting to watch. London's streets were emptier than in 28 Days Later: everyone was about to watch the PM... do... a pig, on live TV, to order, to save a life. We saw the glee-keen audiences, the pubs and hospitals, fail as the hour of his act chugged on. Heads were turned, hands thrown to eyes. Laughter turned to tears. Twitter-glee turned to shame, just for watching, for having wanted so much to watch. People remembered they were people, not perennial gossipy spectators on life. For something that was ostensibly about kidnapping, execution, pig-shagging and focus-group polls, it was strangely life-affirming. And very quietly, very wisely, very funny.

I was once too rude and frankly wrong about a Craig Cash thing, Early Doors, which in the subsequent year I grew to love, once I'd got the pacing and the gentle humour into my head. The Cafe, directed by Cash and written by Ralf Little and Michelle Terry, who co-star, is a terribly similar vehicle, based this time not in a pub but, yes, a cafe, in Weston-super-Mare, and none the less warming for its derivation.

Already now we have the characters - the apparently dotty gran who's still a techno-whizz, the single mum running the cafe and trying desperately to marry off her pretty daughter, Sarah. Sarah's various possible suitors, her nice ex, Ralf, and the pompous rich homecoming whizz-kid. The pace is... slow. Delightfully so. The humour is... slow. Delightfully so. As in when Ralf's character asks for an "egg mayo baguette, but no mayo. And on a roll". Long pause. "Egg roll, then?" "Yes."

Oh, you have to see it to get it, and I really wish they hadn't so directly lifted, from Blackadder, the phrase "thick as a whale omelette", but, trust me, there's a lot of slow-cooked delight here.

Ralph Fiennes played the Bishop of London in the knockout opening of the wildly welcome return of Rev. Apparently real revs love Rev, as it makes them seem human. Tom Hollander again did just that, his face a perfect ever-changing landscape of very human conceits and contradictions and petty frustrations as he tries to be good. His Adam Smallbone struggled this week with the ethics of accepting a "hero" award for something he hadn't... exactly... done. At all. You truly felt for him; the church, his community, especially his wife, who wanted a new frock, were throatily urging him on, against his Christian (or simply human) instincts.

Watching his face as he was gently, subtly, quietly talked out of acceptance at the end by wise Bishop Fiennes was like watching an age-old battle, a Greek tragicomedy, the conflict between ego and honesty. Some of this is really beautiful. Other bits are just wise, funny, modern. Attempting to gee up sullen inner-city kids for a trip to the seaside, Adam asks, with eager innocence: "Now... how many of you have seen a cow?" All hands, of course, rise, in a chorus of boredom. Adam is relatively unfazed, but then furiously... fazed... at the paperwork, the CRB and health and safety forms needed to take to the seaside a bunch of children who virulently don't want to go. This is lovely.

Liam Neeson was playing gloriously against type in the opener of Life's Too Short. He was pitching, to Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant (who play the successful comedy partnership Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant) a change of career; Liam wanted to branch into comedy. It took guts and no small talent from Neeson to come across as the world's most dour, egotistic, pedantic and, crucially, utterly humourless actor; his deadpanning of this alter ego made for five deeply funny minutes of comedy. I bet they fell about between takes.

I still like Gervais but perhaps wisely, given that a couple of odd little, ahem, misinterpretations by lesser minds, and the preponderance of that infuriating giggle - oh God, I've just thought of its screech as he falls about between takes - had begun to manage the impossible and take the sheen off Ricky Gervais for even diehard fans, he's put himself well in the background. Instead, the star is, of course, Warwick Davis, Britain's self-styled "go-to dwarf".

Warwick is immense. That's not a cheap sizeist joke, though I'm sure he wouldn't mind; he makes enough of them himself, mainly just by default, by being there physically, letting the camera show the absurdities. Not only is he a good actor, he's a terrific comic. He plays a far less likable version of himself, lacking in self-knowledge and overburdened with ego. In fact, he plays himself as David Brent. With the added size advantage, the contradictions become even more excruciating, as in his disdain for his tall, pretty wife. When he basically falls out of his Range Rover while voicing something about Martin Luther King, we're back, thanks this time to a brave and talented dwarf, to golden Gervais territory, with just-so timing and direction. This could be, you'll excuse me, huge.

The Ladykillers - reborn for the stage

Now more than 50 years old, Ealing comedy The Ladykillers is one of Britain's best-loved films. So how will Graham Linehan, writer of The IT Crowd and Father Ted, rework it for the theatre?

Jo Brand interview

Jo Brand on friendships with men, the charm of Jeremy Clarkson, and why she's not going to be Brucie.

This much I know: Richard Herring

The comedian, 44, on love, personal deficiencies and why Barry Cryer is still the best.

Finally on real TV, and one of those things whose slow-burn brilliance for once merits repeated repeats (though why the BBC earlier this year hid it away on BBC4 at something like midnight is still a mystery; doesn't it know when it's got Office-standard comedy?) is Twenty Twelve, John Morton's pre-Olympic spoof mockumentary which opened on BBC2 with a typically splendidly bright episode about a clock. An Olympic clock, of course. The proud chippy young northern artist won't explain quite how it works - "it's not snarking complicated". Except he doesn't say snarking, and it is in fact stupidly complicated. It's up to the fine Hugh Bonneville, head of "deliverance" for 2012, and Jessica Haynes as his memorable gobbledespeak PR to fail to work out how it works. "Look, does it count backwards in numbers or in time?" inquires anxious hapless Hugh of her. "Yeah, sure, OK. Well, either. I mean, both. Sensational!" Slowly, you realise there is a horological car-crash ahead. Every episode here is a subtle gem, getting way too close for comfort on the excruciations of political correctness, our modern failure to organise a cup of tea without a flowchart and the impossibility of getting athletes to say anything interesting, ever. It's on at a normal time now and you've no excuse for missing it. I'm going to record every one and play it as balm throughout the horrors that will be our real 2012.