Gillian Reynolds

As Alec Guinness did in the 1949 film version of Kind Hearts and Coronets, Alistair McGowan took all the parts of all the Gascoynes (D'Ascoynes in the film) and - with the possible exception of his Lady Edith - did so nimbly and amusingly. Natalie Walter as the ruthless Unity (the Dennis Price part) impressed. It was the script that limped, always a minute behind listener expectation.

David Nobbs, wonderfully comic writer whether on radio, TV or in print, begins a three-part series talking to an audience about his work and some people he's worked with over the years. As he's written for Frankie Howerd, David Frost and The Two Ronnies, invented such TV comedies as A Bit of a Do, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and (for Radio 4) The Maltby Collection, it's a rich field. Mia Soteriou and Martin Trenaman are the readers, Andrew McGibbon produces for independents Curtains for Radio.

You don't have to have seen the classic 1949 film of Kind Hearts and Coronets (with Dennis Price as the villainous Louis Mazzini murdering his way through all the D'Ascoynes, each one played by Alec Guinness, for the family fortune) to enjoy David Spicer's radio sequel.

Time has rolled on, we're in the 20th century. Unity Holland (Natalie Walter) is up against many other claimants to the earldom, each played by clever Alistair McGowan and all of them ruthless.

As many listening to this reversal-of-convention panel game will loathe chairman Charlie Brooker as love his iconoclasm. Not every show is going to meet with universal approval. Yet radio does so much comedy that people tend to forget Alan Partridge was born here and Whose Line Is It Anyway? blazed a trail all the way to the USA.

Richard Wilson, actor, director and possibly the nation's favourite fictional grouse, got so fed up with being greeted with his One Foot in the Grave TV catchline "I don't believe it!" that he's now been persuaded to launch his "radiography". It's a heady mix of the actual with the fictional, written by Jon Canter, starring Wilson and a starry roster of support which includes John Sessions, David Tennant and Arabella Weir. Unpick the facts (Wilson is unmarried, private, passionate about theatre, politics and Manchester United) from the mischievous fantasies.

Here's a play about the friendship that grew between the two lead actors in Dad's Army, John Le Mesurier (played by Anton Lesser) and Arthur Lowe (Robert Daws), which began on the TV series and lasted all their lives. Playwright Roy Smiles switches between the letters the pair exchanged in the 1980s, remembering how they got to know each other making the show, and afterwards, showing why such different people remained such pals. Maybe part of it was the integrity of the David Croft and Jimmy Perry scripts which, 40 years on, still shine.

Lynne Truss, whose phenomenal bestseller Eats, Shoots and Leaves was born from the response to a programme on punctuation she did for Radio 4, puts on her fiction writing hat for three imaginary dialogues, all recorded at the recent More Than Words festival in Bristol. To start, here's The Periwinkle and the Hermit Crab, respectively played by Bill Wallis and Geoffrey Palmer. The Periwinkle is cheerful, mischievous, jaunty. The Hermit Crab is a bit of a misery, although for pretty good reasons. Turns out they share a common enemy.

Ed Reardon, sublime creation of Andrew Nickolds and Christopher Douglas, is already well-established as a comic hero. His eighth series of adventures, to he heard in Ed Reardon's Week on Radio 4 on Tuesday evenings, is turning him into a national treasure.

Ed, as those of us who have loved him from his first Radio 4 appearance in January 2005 will know, is the curmudgeon's curmudgeon. Failed writer, failing adult education lecturer, divorced, perpetually hard up, bad father, constantly on the scrounge, possessed of an agent who does nothing for him, pursued by furious envy of a more successful erstwhile friend, he is fluently pompous, witheringly contemptuous and utterly recognisable, especially when ranting. I used to think I was once married to him. Now when I hear Ed, I hear me.

In the manner of the best comedy, he is first set at a distance but gradually brought close enough to recognise. In last week's episode, Original British Drama, Ed was nicking cat food and canned pudding from charity food banks, trying to stave off a rent rise, wasting police time and gleefully concocting a totally fictional biography for a supposedly real-life BBC TV docudrama. In the process, through the dialogue between all the other characters, the programme began to speak for everyone who shouts at TV plays for their gross verbal and visual solecisms, anyone who can't quite adapt to chatty new Radio 3.

We laugh when the desk sergeant tells Ed that Radio 3 is what they have on all the time now, how it lowers stress levels. We rant along with Ed at how the old Third Programme is now the home of "guess the mystery instrument" phone-ins. If Count Arthur Strong has turned you off the 6:30 slot on Radio 4, conquer your mistrust. Ed (played by Christopher Douglas) is the man. This evening he will again have to reconcile his deep hatred of Jaz Milvaine (once a pal, now a hated Hollywood success) with the need to earn a few quid. This epic struggle will tell you more about contemporary culture than a month of Radio 4's Front Row.

Phil Whelan's new comedy imagines an exploration in space, the colonisation of a new planet, the making of a new and better society. What makes it funny is that its characters are (and remain) all too recognisably human. So when the leader of the expedition dies on the journey and his second-in-command takes over, there's bound to be a bit of jostling for precedence, especially as Brian, the notional new leader, thinks a nice meeting can sort most things out. He's about to learn a lot. Nicholas Lyndhurst, Vicki Pepperdine and Tom Goodman-Hill star.

The radio show set to be a TV hit: after 45 years later

Gillian Reynolds on long-running radio classic Just A Minute, as it arrives on teatime TV, still fronted by Nicholas Parsons and with a host of big-name stars rising to the challenge.