Harry Venning

Cop comedy drama Vexed has returned for a second series, complete with a brand new partner for Toby Stephens' lazy, disorganised and self-regarding detective inspector Jack Armstrong. Lucy Punch leaves the cast to be replaced by Miranda Raison as DI Georgina Dixon, and I'm sorry to say there is as little chemistry between the new pairing as there was between the old. Possibly even less.

This is something of a problem when your whole series is predicated on one of those love/hate, chalk/cheese, will they/won't they relationships beloved of television producers.

It is never helpful to apportion blame, but nonetheless the fault lies with Stephens' insistence on trying to play the comedy instead of the character. What he produces is a bizarre and wholly irritating combination of Simon Templar and Swiss Tony, the car salesman from The Fast Show. He attempts loveable oaf, but manages only the second bit.

Britain's Oldest Stand-Up is an irresistibly charming documentary chronicling 90 year-old Jack Woodward's return to the stage after an absence of nearly half a century. The venue he has his heart set on is the Hammersmith Apollo in London, where he has admired the young upstart Michael McIntyre perform on the BBC's Live at the Apollo show.

And guess what? He lands a five-minute gig there as the warm-up for Ed Byrne. Armed with some new material supplied by comedy writer Les Keen, Jack heads for his date with destiny.

Nervous? Not a bit of it. Jack is excited at the prospect of playing to a 3,000-strong London audience, who hold no terrors for a comic who has played working men's clubs in Gateshead where hecklers threw coal.

"I heard you clapping and got here as quick as I could," is Woodward's opening line, and the laughs just keep coming. Turns out he's a pretty good comic.

My advice to anyone thinking of booking him is - don't delay.

When Angelos Epithemiou stumbled on to Shooting Stars clutching his trademark carrier bag, he effortlessly stole the show from under the noses of Vic & Bob.

Now Channel 4 has given him his own comedy chat show, but the character just doesn't have enough depth to sustain half an hour. It has its moments, but this is a show best suited to an inebriated, undiscriminating, impressionable audience. You know - students.

Many of Partridge's much-loved comic quirks and foibles were on display, plus a new one - any offensive, slanderous or racist utterance was followed by an immediate "I take that back!", by way of a catch-all apology. Genius.

A Ventriloquist's Story review

While the film was shot through with melancholy, Nina Conti never allowed it to descend into the morose, not least because the comic targets on offer are just too plentiful for her to resist. Witty, mischievous, self-effacing and engaging, Conti is great company.

The disappointment of the week had to be Dead Boss, BBC3's six-part comedy thriller with murder-mystery overtones starring Sharon Horgan, who co-wrote the show with Holly Walsh.

Horgan plays Helen, wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment within the forbidding walls of Broadmarsh Prison. And broad is the operative word here. The producers have clearly gone for big laughs - a laudable ambition - but the route they've taken is obvious and predictable. The quality of the jokes is erratic, to say the least, while the talented cast wastes its energies on stale stereotypes.

Horgan, the most deliciously subtle of performers, is left frantically mugging away for laughs, which is something of a crime in itself.

Starlings is a slow-moving but sweet-natured comedy-drama series about four generations living beneath the same modestly sized roof in Matlock, Derbyshire. Lesley Sharp and Brendan Coyle are the show's solidly dependable stars.

The series commences with the home birth of baby Zac, who not only gets the series off to a suitably dramatic start but provides the writers with a nifty plot device whereby granddad introduces him - and us - to the rest of the family in turn.

The characters are engaging, the relationships between them interesting and the script consistently amusing. Mercifully, eccentricity is kept to a minimum and the plot lines have a reasonably firm hold on the recognisably real.
Apart from Zac's arrival not a lot happens, and what does happen takes its time about it. However, an hour in the company of the Starlings passes pleasantly enough, and there are enough hints at darker plot developments ahead to keep my interest for the foreseeable future.

The critical response to the first series of Episodes was mixed, to say the least, but not from me. I loved it unequivocally. I loved the combination of sweet and cynical, I loved the clever scripts that were consistently funny without ever feeling forced, I loved the deft touch of an impeccable cast who knew just how to underplay a line and I loved the skewed rom-com narrative, with its themes of friendship and sexual betrayal, that twisted through the series delivering shocks and surprises en route. But most of all, I loved Matt LeBlanc. His performance as Matt LeBlanc was a joyous study in conceit, charisma and Hollywood crap, shot through with pure charm.

I am delighted to say that Series 2 has simply picked up where the first left off, and I have my Friday nights sorted for the next six weeks.
We rejoin the production team behind troubled US sitcom Pucks as their baby makes its TV network debut to coruscating reviews - "Pucks Sucks!" - but more than healthy audience figures and approval ratings. Next week they will be up against a rival network's new sitcom featuring a talking dog, but what kind of competition is that going to offer?

LeBlanc, meanwhile, has other things on his mind following a surprise erotic encounter with the producer's wife at the show's private screening.
"Getting jerked off while watching yourself on TV - actors work their whole lives for this!"
As the Americans say, 'what's not to like?'

Perhaps I have become a little jaundiced towards sketch comedy in general, but I sat stone-faced through huge swathes of E4's latest offering. Writer/stars Seb Cardinal and Dustin Demri-Burns have a fine eye for character detail, and are both strong performers, but when they do come up with an authentically funny idea they can't let go of it.

The vomiting homicide officers, the improvised audition and the French stunt fly sketches all had their respective charms but went on for far too long.

Other sections were cleverly filmed but failed to deliver any satisfactory laughs, most notably the zombie chase opener. Top marks for the stylish and atmospheric movie pastiche, but the build up simply served to make a disappointing punchline look all the more feeble.

On reflection, Cardinal Burns showed more than enough potential to merit revisiting, although I have a horrible feeling they might follow the popular sketch show trend of introducing all their best ideas in episode one and then regurgitating them throughout the rest of the series. Come on boys, prove me wrong.

Interesting fact: in the late 1630s, as part of the war effort against the Scots, womens' urine was collected from church congregations for use in the production of gunpowder. This is grist to the mill for Horrible Histories, back on CBBC for a fourth series. And isn't that Steve Pemberton, Mark Gatiss and Reece Shearsmith, AKA The League Of Gentlemen, joining in the fun? Which just goes to show how much credibility HH enjoys these days.