Harry Venning

The Guardian axes Clare In The Community

The Guardian has axed its Clare In The Community cartoon, which also spawned a long-running Radio 4 comedy, after almost 25 years. Created by Harry Venning, the strip about a well-meaning social worker has fallen victim to major cuts at the newspaper, which is expecting a £25million hit because of coronavirus.

There was a marked absence of wit and charm throughout Channel 4's new comedy panel show Virtually Famous, which trawls internet postings for its inspiration. The danger here, which the producers signally failed to identify in advance, is that the YouTube clips - most of which have garnered hits in their hundreds of thousands, if not millions - would prove a whole lot more entertaining than anything the comics employed to comment on them could produce. And if I can give a kindly word of advice to panellist Chris Ramsey: things aren't any funnier if you shout them.

Just when you think the whole comedy documentary format has had every last laugh wrung out of it, along comes BBC3's People Just Do Nothing with a take that is fresh, original and very funny.

The four-part series centres upon Kurupt FM, "the biggest and baddest pirate station in the land", operating out of a high-rise council flat in Brentford, west London, and broadcasting all the way to Shepherd's Bush, west London, where it dissolves into white noise.

The station's leader is garage "legend" MC Grindah (Allan Mustafa), a man whose self-importance is in inverse proportion to his self-awareness. Like all the best comedy monsters, Grindah is a combination of the desperately pitiful and the truly appalling, a strutting motormouth forever spewing cliches, bombast and delusion to anybody stupid enough to listen. This is largely limited to his mate and co-presenter DJ Beats (Hugo Chegwin), cronies Decoy and Steves (Dan Sylvester Woolford and Steve Stamp), local entrepreneur Chabuddy G (Asim Chaudhry) and, further fanning the flames of Grindah's rampant ego, an off-screen BBC documentary team earnestly trying to capture the authentic voice of the streets.

We also get to meet Grindah's girlfriend Miche (Lily Brazier), whose epically inane ramblings include the dismissal of her boyfriend's criminal convictions as "silly little things, like GBH and hate crime".

Episode one saw Kurupt FM trying to soundproof their walls with egg boxes following threats from a neighbour to report them to the council. Grindah is alert to the danger such an eventuality poses to both the station's secret location and their very existence as musical outlaws. "The government works for the council," he explains to his equally dim cohorts.

The set-up is original, the execution clever, the characters rich and the acting superb. From many wonderful moments, my favourite has to be Chabuddy G proudly showing off his latest money-making scheme: bags of peanut dust, everybody's favourite when all the peanuts have gone.

The first series of The Mimic ended with our copycat hero Martin (Terry Mynott) hiding in the toilet, paralysed by stage fright and unable to face the television cameras that could have propelled him to stardom.

Series two of Channel 4's sweet, gentle and understated comedy finds him back on the bottom rung of showbusiness, busking in the local shopping precinct, facing competition from a violinist and a human statue.

Anyone expecting to guffaw will be disappointed, but The Mimic's combination of the consistently amusing and irresistibly engaging should put a large smile on most faces.

And then, of course, there are Martin's uncanny impersonations. Episode one treated us to Walter and Jesse from Breaking Bad, two variations of Harry Potter's headteacher Dumbledore, Morgan Freeman as the Hobbit and the Imp from Game of Thrones, who, it was pointed out, sounds a bit like Victor Meldrew. An observation I sincerely hope I can forget before the fantasy drama's next series, or it will never be the same.

Imagine… Monty Python - And Now For Something Rather Similar opened with a series of interviews given by the comedy team in 1999. Each, in turn, gave a professional, personal, artistic or logistical reason why they would never perform as a group again.

Fast-forward 14 years, and the Pythons have announced a reunion. It was going to be a one-off performance in London's O2 Arena, but when this sold out in 45 seconds they quickly expanded it into a very lucrative tour.

Imagine… and Alan Yentob tracked the Pythons down to various parts of the globe, where they were all engaged upon individual projects, to discuss the forthcoming tour. Most expressed mild enthusiasm, John Cleese declared curmudgeonly ambivalence, while Terry Gilliam announced that he wouldn't be able to attend any rehearsals as he had a film to launch in Paris.

Only Eric Idle appeared genuinely committed to the undertaking. Moreover, he wasn't content to stage a greatest hits sketch show but took it upon himself to produce an authentic stage spectacular, complete with an all-singing, all-dancing chorus.

The other Pythons seemed happy to let him do all the hard work, put in the hours, shoulder the stress and accept the responsibility. Which, in my experience, is pretty much the template for all creative 'teams'.

TV review: Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled

The bottom line is that the format works, even if an hour's running time does stretch it to its limits. The guests are well chosen, the atmosphere is relaxed and the anecdotes are very, very funny.

Badults, currently and mystifyingly enjoying a second series, continues to spray out a veritable diarrhoea of terrible jokes that even the Chuckle Brothers would have put a line through at first-draft stage. Like this one: "I'm on the five:two diet. I eat five breakfasts and two dinners!".

Rik Mayall certainly didn't do the show any favours by dying and reminding everybody that Badults is basically a very poor copy of The Young Ones with no Rick, Neil or Vyvyan, but three Mikes.

The main problem with Badults, apart from the script, is that the protagonists - fringe legends Pappy's - are virtually indistinguishable except by their hairstyles. It is a show that would definitely benefit from the introduction of a little character comedy or, failing that, some characters. Jokes, even good ones, quickly become boring unless you have some sort of emotional investment in the people making them.

I have it on good authority that Pappy's are quite brilliant live, but whatever their stage alchemy may be it is signally failing to translate to the screen.

RIP Pucks!, the show within a show featured in the brilliant Episodes.

Having failed to compete with a rival channel's talking-dog sitcom, Pucks! was left to wither and die in the wasteland of the Saturday-night schedules.

Meanwhile, Matt LeBlanc (played by Matt LeBlanc) was busy trying to jump both ship and co-star Morning's younger sister, who was actually her daughter.

LeBlanc also found time to launch an embittered diatribe against British actors moving to Hollywood, mastering the accent and stealing all the best roles. You know who you are Elba, West, Laurie, Lewis, Pattinson, Lincoln, Sheen, Freeman...

TV review: Original comedy shorts (BBC iPlayer)

BBC Comedy has uploaded six Original Comedy Shorts on to iPlayer, possibly to convince disgruntled viewers that the internet service can provide a viable alternative to BBC Three as a showcase for new, innovative and experimental work. Having said that, the writers and performers involved are all solidly old guard, with Bob Mortimer contributing to half the series.