Gillian Reynolds

After two weeks of trailers few can be unaware of the return of the "antidote to panel games" with Stephen Fry in the chair. Recorded at Her Majesty's Theatre weeks ago, the audience roars approval for Fry's saucy delivery of Iain Pattinson's salty script. Sven replaces Samantha as the invisible scorer, offering more chances to spot the innuendo. Graeme Garden, Barry Cryer, Tim Brooke-Taylor and guest panellist Victoria Wood make merry with the customary multitude of entendres, double and single Colin Sell, as ever, is at the piano.

The BBC has its own credit crunch so repeats are piling up (five, not counting regulars, on Radio 4 alone today). But, as someone once said, it's not a repeat if you missed it first time. So, if this first radio play by Peter Souter escaped you originally, don't let it pass unnoticed now. It's funny, romantic, recognisable. Also beautifully acted (Tamsin Greig, Rory Kinnear, Nicky Henson, Kerry Shale) and directed (by Gordon House). And it heralded the start of Souter's truly promising career. If BBC radio drama funds permit, of course.

Thoughtful, inventive comedy by Adam Rosenthal and Viv Ambrose. Newfangle (Russell Tovey) is one of a tribe of humans at an early, pre-verbal stage of development. Picked on by the alpha male (Hugh Bonneville), hopelessly in love, looked down on by his mother (Maureen Lipman) who prefers his brother (Gabriel Vick), Newfangle is a thinker and one day, wishing to express his thoughts out loud, he invents language. Then people start using it for things he didn't intend. Soon prehistory turns out to quite a lot like life anywhere, anytime. But funnier.

John Godber and Jane Thornton's comedy is about starting a new business. Hope (Suranne Jones) has just left her successful businessman husband and is sleeping on the spare air mattress of old school friend Jodie (Susan Cookson) while her divorce comes through. Jodie is a workaholic, Hope relies more on the wine bottle. Together they're starting a sandwich shop in East Yorkshire. Jodie knows every variety of bap, bun, loaf and stottie cake. Hope doesn't. No wonder they're nervous as they await the arrival of their first customer.

An intriguing Noel Coward playlet, never before performed in public as the Lord Chamberlain refused it a licence because of its racy theme. Alice (Federay Holmes) has been married to David (Samuel West) for six years yet she's not satisfied. "Maybe one desires something more than straightness, honesty and good looks," she tells her friend Marion (Lisa Dillon), before recommending Marion have an affair with David. Alice isn't in love with anyone else, just bored by David's reliability. And Marion confesses she's in love with him. What next?

Richard Briers stars with Rory Kinnear in Ed Harris's delicate, distinctive play about an old man remembering and disremembering. He's having a dialogue with his younger self (hence the double lead casting), revolving round pictures that lodge in the mind and why they linger. The thing is, some of it is being spoken out loud to the nurse who's checking him over. When she tells him there's a smart strange coat in the kitchen he gets very upset. Then all sorts of voices from the past flood in, echoing memories of childhood, of first love.

Luke (Ian Puleston-Davies) is a writer, works on a TV serial. When he loses his job, he decides to downsize, moving from a trendy part of Manchester to a little house (a bargain!) in Salford. He used to live there in his student days so thinks he can make friends with the neighbours and put up with the litter, graffiti, thieving and such. But it's harder than he thinks, even though he's quite hard. When he gets some foreign tenants, things turn nasty. Ed Jones's play is brilliantly observed, very well acted, quirky, strangely funny and very disturbing.

Stephen Mangan, a wonderful television actor who can do radio very well too (it's a rarer gift than you'd think) plays Sam, a fantasy novelist who gets swirled off into the alternative universe of Lower Earth to do battle for ownership of a magic sword which controls (naturally, what's the use of a magic sword otherwise?) everyone down there. Alistair McGowan plays his fiendish opponent Lord Darkness. There's an Elf Lord too (Darren Boyd), a dwarf called Dean (Kevin Eldon) and a Warrior Princess (Sophie Winkleman). Dave Lamb plays Sam's dog, Amis.

Here's a rumbustious comedy by the great Alan Plater about what happens when politics try bending the arts into an instrument of cultural regeneration. A new art gallery is opening in a big old warehouse on the site of a former shipyard in the North East. All of the attendants are, by council decree, mature locals. That means they are practical, earthy, experienced. It does not mean that they understand the aims and objectives of the gallery's director. They can solve the problems left behind by dodgy workmen but can't quite see the point of the project.

A one-off special edition of the spoof phone-in show, an eve of Budget salute to all the things we don't know and can't grasp about what's happened to the economy and why having a balance in the bank is suddenly a bad thing. Presented, as ever, by the utterly witless 'Gary Bellamy' (Rhys Thomas) with the only too believable callers played by Paul Whitehouse, Amelia Bullmore, Felix Dexter and co, with special guest Mark Gatiss. Word is that this show is about to transfer to television. Ah well, that'll be another one gone to where the big money grows.