Gillian Reynolds

Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus! (Radio 4, 10.30am) is a tale of fan power. Forty years ago Alfred Biolek persuaded the Monty Python team to make two 45-minute specials for German TV. Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Biolek himself tell Henning Wehn (the German comedian who's always on Radio 4 shows) how it happened. From independents All Out.

David Tennant plays Joe, father of 10-year-old Tom and teenage Lucy. He's no longer married to Mimi (Sarah Alexander). She's on marriage three now but both parents try hard to keep the ties that, naturally, will bind them all at least until the two children have finished school. So there's lots of driving around, talking on mobile phones, picking up and bringing back, trying not to contradict each other. But it's all very wearing so Joe has a bright idea. Is is practical? This comedy by Marcella Evaristi shows every sign of being neatly drawn from life.

Peter Souter's play is a romantic comedy. Alex Jennings and Tamsin Greig play a couple who are splitting up. They meet in their old, cold house to divide up their joint possessions. There's a locked sea chest, an old tandem, a little tin chicken that lays tin eggs, that sort of stuff. As they go through it all they're bound to think of how they got them (just like in that great song, Thanks For the Memory) and the icy atmosphere warms up. They know each other well. And this writer (remember his Goldfish Girl?) knows how funny that can be.

The Gobetweenies, Radio 4, preview

Gillian Reynolds previews a Radio 4 comedy about divorced parents, starring David Tennant.

Stephanie Cole and David Ryall star in the last of a quartet of plays (each by a different writer) about grown-up children who (for various and recognisable reasons) still live at home. This one's by Alexander Kirk, about a skinflint son and a more impulsive mum. Each has been interesting, sometimes touching and remarkable for showcasing the impressive range of acting talent among Britain's older actresses.

New situation comedy. And it's one worth catching. Written by and starring Simon Day, its six episodes feature him as different people who turn up to perform at a small theatre (so small there's a real person taking telephone bookings). The first one Day gives us is Yorkshire poet Geoffrey Allerton, whose observations on his own life ("My dad had big hands, like paddles...") bear more than a passing resemblance to one or two voices often heard on the airwaves. Catherine Shepherd, Arabella Weir and Felix Dexter are among the shining support cast.

Rufus Hound, one of those comedians who seem to have whizzed from obscure clubs into radio and TV fame without many raised laughs as the wind beneath their wings, hosts this new weekly roundup of news from the comedy front line. He talks to performers, reviews acts and trails programmes, comments on highlights of the week's events (e.g. yet more awards nights), chats to studio guests. It's not exactly the Today or World at One of mirth, but may appeal to any bold soul who's still contemplating shelling out a few quid on live laughter this weekend.

Hmm. How strange of Radio 4 to schedule on the same day two comedies about offspring still living at home. This rather over-written one is about a mother (Alison Steadman) whose son (Alexander Kirk) is 41 and not yet moved away. He says he's going to New York, save up, pass his driving test. These prospects seem remote as Mother serves up the oven chips with fair warning that she's going to get him a girlfriend, so he'll move out. Now there's a modern supposition. These days they'd both move in, as used to be customary in all hard times of yore.

Sharp new comedy, from Christopher Douglas and Nicola Sanderson. Beauty (Jocelyn Jee Esien) is an African woman, in Britain to work, finding it hard to make her family back home understand why she can't supply new glasses and sundry other stuff on request. But she has to send some money back home so she goes to an agency and says she's available for care work. All she's offered is a bit of cleaning. It turns out to be for a really interesting woman (Jenny Agutter) who lives with her mother and her own daughter. I didn't think I'd laugh. I did. A lot.

When this comedy series began it went out late. It still fooled gullible souls like me into thinking it really was a phone-in and not an exquisite parody of one. Host Gary Bellamy is played by Rhys Thomas, the voices of all those nutters, fanatics, drunks and po-faced poshies come from Paul Whitehouse, Charlie Higson, Amelia Bullmore, Simon Day, Lucy Montgomery and Felix Dexter. And very funny they are, probably because they are not a million miles away from the real people who call Radio 5 Live's real-life late-night hosts Tony Livesey and Stephen Nolan.