Grace Dent

Give me The Good Life every Christmas

Keep your shiny new Doctor Who in its box. There's only one Christmas special that brings real joy - and it's from 1977.

Over the past three weeks, word of mouth has steadily been growing about new BBC Two comedy, Miranda. At first glance, it's a rather curious proposition: a star vehicle for Miranda Hart, which is sort of in the style of an old-school sitcom, features Tom Ellis and Patricia Hodge, and has a mixture of slapstick style gags and great observational wit. On paper, there's no way this show would work, and for the first few minutes of an episode you're thinking 'what the hell is this?'

But persevere with it, as many have done, and the delights of this show start to become apparent. Miranda is a much warmer presence than some of her other TV appearances might have implied. Her pieces to camera are actually more endearing than annoying most of the time, and the supporting cast look like they're having a lot of fun.

Yes, it's couched in old sitcom values, but that's not neccessarily a bad thing. There's something rather sweet and familiar about it, even down to the old Croft and Perry style end credit waving sequence. A lot of the humour in here feels real and accessible. And if you're still not convinced - Grace Dent thinks it's marvellous, and she never lies.

Winning Losers

Paternity muddles, brainwashing cults and a failure to find 'the one': things didn't work out as planned for Mark and Jez in the last series of Peep Show. So what fresh humiliation awaits this time? Grace Dent joins them on set.

Much easier to fathom is the gentle, quasi-topical BBC1-style comedy found in Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse's new sketch series Harry & Paul (Fri, 9pm, BBC1). Never side-splitting, never totally terrible, these days the duo find their fun in haughty Polish cafe girls, meathead South Africans and dim interior designers.

Call me crazy ... but isn't the best children's TV being made now?

I loved Harry Hill's Shark Infested Custard and Gina Yashere's Gina's Laughing Gear. I set my Sky+ for David Schneider (The Day Today) as Uncle Max, or Marcus Brigstocke as King Stupid, which was simply Blackadder with added gunge. The fact is that some of the sharpest writers in Britain had a turn penning CITV's My Parents Are Aliens, and I don't know a child under five who isn't beguiled by Charlie and Lola. Kids TV today, when made properly, can be wonderful.