Gareth McLean

In deeply dispiriting but strangely not surprising news, BBC3 has axed Pulling, a decision that will persuade no one that Danny 'Phoo Action' Cohen isn't a moron. I suppose that without Pulling around, Coming Of Age won't look quite as atrocious but is that really reason enough to axe one of the finest comedies on TV? I suppose if there ever was a third series of Gavin and Stacey, Cohen would pass on that too because every recommission means one less space for a new project. You can only hope that one of Janice Hadlow's first decisions as controller of BBC2 would be to offer a home to Sharon Horgan and Dennis Kelly's marvellous comedy. Good knows it doesn't have anything remotely funny of its own at the moment. Unless you count Jonathan Harvey's Beautiful People. Which I don't.

Such is the hackneyed feel of this witless sketch show - skits include a parody of This Morning presented by Dodi Fayed and Princess Diana - you may feel as if you've been transported back at least a decade. Amazingly, it takes not just writer-performers Tom Meeten and Barunka O'Shaughnessy to produce this twaddle but at least six others and a performance consultant. Makes The Kevin Bishop Show] look like Morecambe & Wise.

There are an absolute maximum of three laugh-out-loud moments in this self-conscious and crass studenty sitcom, which co-stars Sinead Moynihan, slumming it here after her stint in BBC3's criminally underrated Drop Dead Gorgeous. So if you're content with a hit-rate of one laugh every 10 minutes, tune in to Dan Clark's comedy about an idiotic, priapic bloke who is left a house by his foul-mouthed nan. If, however, you fancy more charm, hunt down early 1990s US sitcom Dream On on DVD.

James Corden seems to think he's a comedy genius

The Guardian's Gareth McLean continues his war of words with the show by claiming James Corden has an over-inflated ego and is an ungracious winner.

If, like Ant and Dec, you've never quite established which is which, let me clear it up for you - Alexander Armstrong is the one who did the Pimms' ads while Ben Miller was the creepy civil servant in Primeval and starred in that sitcom with Sarah Alexander, The Worst Week of My Life. After some very dubious opening titles involving dodgy dancing, there are a surprising number of funny sketches, many of them rather risque for BBC1, including splendid skewering of those 'readers emails' bits on breakfast news programmes.

There's little funnier than other people's emotional damage and the consequent mess they make of things, so Chris Niel's tale of two colleagues - he an estranged dad, she lately availed of a dead fiance - who have casual sex and have to deal with the aftermath is very funny indeed. Sharon Horgan (Pulling and Angelo's) and Green Wing's Stephen Mangan star as the pair, with Anthony Head their coke-snorting, sex-crazed boss ("You've been bashing some gash, haven't you?"). Who knew Rupert Giles from Buffy could be so foul-mouthed? To think he kissed Joyce Summers with that mouth.

Written by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong (Peep Show, The Thick of It) and boasting a pedigree cast, which includes Reece Shearsmith, Darren Boyd and Rosie Cavaliero, the second in this commendable comic endeavour doesn't quite deliver the laughs you might expect. The tale of a houseshare in Victorian London, it is silly and clever and marvellously parodies the conventions, characters and cliches of Victorian fiction. With relatives on deathbeds, frustrated spinsters only occupied with embroidery and ebullient doctors, it provides some smirks but there are no laugh-out-loud moments.

As ex-magician Greg Wilson's solicitor tells him after he's been charged with assaulting a woman in the Kingdom of Couches-esque sofa warehouse in which he works, "The law can be a very sexist environment. It's very difficult for women to prove themselves. Especially the ugly ones." Written by Toby Whithouse, whose CV includes Doctor Who and No Angels, this chucklesome, misanthropic comedy has Martin Freeman as Greg and features the excellent Siobhan Finneran and Phil Davis.

A more inane panel game you are unlikely to find - unless you catch the dire News Knight on ITV1, and I'd advise catching hepatitis instead - Mock the Week is a show you don't even laugh at contemptuously.

Rather, as Dara O'Briain, Hugh Dennis, Frankie Boyle, Andy Parsons and Russell Howard wade through it, as if through thigh-high excrement, it's a show to sit slack-jawed in front of, awestruck at its dearth of humour, charm and originality. Still, at least Ben Elton isn't in it.

I'm only here for the beer

The Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps world is inhabited by flimsy stereotypes cut out from How To Build Your Own Lad And Ladettes Funbook, who spout pseudo-smart one liners and for whom smoking a fag qualifies as a defining characteristic.