Gillian Reynolds

Sorcerers, wizards and witches live among us, says the narrator, guarding us against all manner of evil, protecting the planet. This is about 2,000-year-old Mordrin, a laconically philosophical wizard coming to grips with trite human challenges and getting on with his jam-making. He's rather wonderful. Written by David Kay and Gavin Smith, starring Gordon Kennedy.

Chris Addison, columnist and comedian (from The Thick of It and Lab Rats, not to mention his frequent appearances all over this network), gets his own show, a review of the week's big stories. Fellow comedians Andy Zaltzman and Sarah Millican are regular guests, there's to be a special star each week too.

The News at Bedtime (R4, 6.15pm) tries a new tack. Jack Dee and Peter Capaldi, as Jack Tweedledum and Jim Tweedledee, are argumentive anchormen in a world where Humpty Dumpty really has had a great fall. Written by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman. If you're up late making stuffing or doing wrapping here's some kitchen company.

The Count's charms, alas, elude me but he has many 40-something fans, among them his producer (and fellow radio legend) Mark Radcliffe. The Count (played by Steve Delaney) is supposed to be a one-time variety star, now sole proprietor of Doncaster's Academy of Performance, raconteur, malapropist, old, muddled. He lives in a little world where door bells ring, misunderstandings proliferate, butchers are funny and lavs a right laugh. In other words, it's like the radio shows those 40-somethings used to hear at their grans'.

Blaggers are people who pretend to be more important than they really are in order to get past the doormen at significant events. The first rule of blagging is to get away with it. But this series could only have been made by someone who not only is in love with jazz but has passed, legally and often, through its many portals. It is wildly funny. It is also very clever in that David Quantick, who co-writes and presents it, and his producer, Simon Poole, have created a style that not only absolutely fits the subject but mirrors it too.

The funniest show on radio. Ronnie Scott and Benny Green would have loved it. It knows its subject intimately, makes fun of its more solemn advocates, yet celebrates true talent. It's fast, inventive (technically as well as verbally), mirroring its subject in its style, all the while hilariously and utterly accessibleto fans and non-jazzers alike. Co-written and presented by brilliant David Quantick (who has blagged other musical genres on this network in the past equally wittily), produced by Simon Poole for independents Unique.

It's 30 years since Monty Python's Life of Brian first hit the nation's cinemas, heralded by much controversy about whether it was blasphemous and consequent anxiety about who would back it. But it was both a box office success and a critical one and ever since has been voted one of the funniest films of all time. Sanjeev Bhaskar recounts how it was made and who eventually underwrote it (Beatle George Harrison). Lively interviews with Terry Jones, who directed, producer John Goldstone and all the Python team.

Tracy-Ann Oberman plays Dame Shirley Porter with style in Gregory Evans's bold drama of power, personality, ambition, delusion and downfall. Dame Shirley ran Westminster City Council in the Thatcher years and, she hoped, in similar resolute style. But Dame Shirley, in this account, lacks the brain to count the consequences of her actions which is why, after selling off graveyards and council flats, she's astonished to be beaten at the polls and doesn't foresee how an assiduous local government employee could dig up enough evidence to make her flee the country.

You don't have to have heard previous series of this or the full length play last Friday night. You'll catch on right away that Ben (Neil Pearson) is coming back home after a spell in hospital when he's been unconscious, nearly died, is now making a difficult recovery. But it might help to know that it's still bitingly funny, whether about being a patient or a son, a husband or a father. It's written and directed by Nigel Smith and based on his own grim experiences which, with good luck, he's survived and now, with rare skill, he's transformed into comedy.

The funniest programme on radio is The Blagger's Guide to Jazz (Radio 2, Thursdays). Readers may recall I wrote a year ago about David Quantick, a comedy writer and presenter of great talent, originality and industry. If you've listened to his Radio 4 series One or heard previous Blagger's Guides you'll already be a fan. If you have lately observed a woman on the bus to Oxford wheezing, hooting, barking with laughter, tears running down ample cheeks, that was me, listening to last week's Blagger's. There are four more to go. Do not miss a moment. Why? See my first sentence.