Harry Venning

Once Ricky Gervais gets hold of a good idea he really doesn't like to let it go. Employing his trademark mock-documentary format yet again, Derek follows its socially awkward, visually unprepossessing middle-aged hero as he shambles around his workplace, a care home for the elderly.

Although the show is resolutely ambiguous around whether Derek has learning disabilities or not, Gervais' performance in the title role is both sensitive and sympathetic. Disability rights campaigners can rest easy, if this pilot episode is anything to go by.

If the show's framework is disappointingly unoriginal, the tone is a radical departure from anything Gervais has done before. The Office, Extras and Life's Too Short all had their moments of poignancy, but Derek cranks the pathos up to full throttle and the result is bitter-sweet and disarmingly affecting. Between Derek being ridiculed, confounded and bereaved there isn't a lot of room left for comedy, and viewers tuning in for a laugh riot will be disappointed.

But there is still a wealth of comic detail to enjoy, particularly around Derek's friendships and relationships. Karl Pilkington, formerly Gervais' stooge but here making his acting debut as co-star, delivers a particularly delicious deadpan turn as best mate Dougie.

What is it with celebrities and their parents? First Sarah Millican uses her TV show to introduce the world to her dad and his words of wisdom, now Matt Lucas has roped in his mum Diana to provide the comic links for The Matt Lucas Awards.

Truth be told, Mrs Lucas proves good fun, and fits in rather well with the surroundings. Indeed, the show itself is as snug, cosy and comforting as a mother's embrace. If anything a little more edge would have been welcome.

The premise mimics traditional showbusiness award ceremonies, only with bizarre and previously neglected categories such as 'smuggest nation' and 'worst football song ever'. A panel of three celebrity guests are charged with providing the nominations and arguing their case, while host Lucas fires off non-stop quips before deciding on the winner.

It's a pleasant enough distraction, and inaugural guests Henning Wehn, Jason Manford and Graeme Garden proved good value, but The Matt Lucas Awards is clearly a show in the grips of an identity crisis.

The set - a studio-bound facsimile of Lucas' living room - is reminiscent of The Kumars At Number 42, while the format invariably invites comparisons to Room 101. The only truly original aspect of the programme - the designated performance corner where the celebrities indulge in costumed karaoke - is by far the least successful. I'm afraid it looked suspiciously like padding.

A welcome antidote to that snooty know-all Sherlock Holmes, Dirk Gently brought his tangential approach to solving crimes for the third and final time in the series, aided and abetted by long-suffering sidekick MacDuff.

Fun and infuriating in equal measure, Gently went out with a flourish, investigating murders his own bad behaviour had inadvertently precipitated and a stalker who turned out to be Gently himself.

More of the same, please.

Having hoovered up several comedy awards with their stage act, Watson & Oliver have been entrusted with their own BBC2 sketch show and the initial results are encouraging.

Do not expect any comedy revolution as their approach is remorselessly mainstream, inevitably inviting comparison with French And Saunders - did I mention that Watson and Oliver are women? However, the material is genuinely funny and the performances winning. Allowing for the fact all sketch shows are inherently inconsistent I'd say their first episode registered around a 75% success rate, which is good.

They also deserve credit for a particularly high-risk finale, which saw the pair fight for the right to share a show-stopping duet with guest star John Barrowman. All teeth, jazz hands and unconfined ego, Barrowman sent himself up with an enthusiasm that threatened to overwhelm his hosts, but they weathered the storm of upstaging intact.

It only remains to be seen if Watson & Oliver will fall prey to the dominant trend among sketch shows of lazily recycling the same gags and characters, albeit with minor modifications, throughout the remainder of the series.

Sky 1's latest sitcom The Cafe, written by and starring Ralf Little and Michelle Terry, is set in a family run cafe on the Weston-super-Mare seafront. "This really is the arse end of nowhere" observes one visitor into his mobile phone, all within the hearing of the diners and staff (frequently one and the same thing).
That may be so, but the unprepossessing location is home to a truly fresh, funny, romantic and charming show, populated by believable, likeable characters. Terry plays Sarah, recently returned from London nursing a broken heart, bruised ego and ambitions as a writer of children's books. Little is Richard, care home assistant by day, putative rock star by night. Former childhood sweethearts, the pair have settled into a comfortable platonic friendship. As if.

Director Craig Cash imposes his trademark naturalism and attention to detail to the proceedings whilst terrific dialogue, always funny but never forced, pings around the walls of the cafe like a demented squash ball. I sat through the first two episodes sporting a delighted grin, disturbed only by the occasional guffaw. Comparisons with Gavin & Stacey are inevitable, but favourable. The Cafe might just prove a similar comedy classic.

I'm not quite sure what to make of Life's Too Short, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's much hyped new comedy starring Warwick Davies as a deluded, out of work actor.

An amalgam of The Office and Extras, presented in the once pioneering mock documentary format, it comes complete with all the comedy tics, touches and glances to camera associated with Gervais/Merchant productions. There are even moments when the excellent Davies, as the self-styled "UK's go-to dwarf", behaves and sounds exactly like Gervais' most celebrated creation David Brent.

Life's Too Short has a familiarity that breeds, if not quite contempt, a genuine sense of disappointment at the lack of ambition. Even Gervais' trademark assaults on political correctness - a blacked up woman dwarf impersonating Stevie Wonder, for example - come over as contrived.

But when it is funny, Life's Too Short is funnier than anything else currently on television and Gervais appreciates the crowd pleasing value of a good star turn. I suspect people will be discussing Liam Neeson's inspired cameo, playing himself as an aspirational stand-up comedian, long after the show's weaker moments are forgotten.

Mr and Mrs Hotty Hott Show was a product of Channel 4's Comedy Lab and, frankly, it could have done with a bit longer in the petri dish.

Written and performed by the sketch group Pappy's, and filmed before a bewilderingly delighted studio audience, the show purported to be a beauty contest - with the emphasis on inner beauty - inviting members of the public to compete in increasingly silly challenges, including the rolling of a stuffed lion attached to a skateboard.

Actually that bit did make me laugh quite a lot, and the general silliness was undoubtedly infectious. But it was all rather too reminiscent of Shooting Stars for my liking, and the gratuitous involvement of a power-posing dwarf in swimming trunks just made me depressed.

Forget political correctness, this is a sure sign of comedy at its most unimaginative and desperate.

No dead parrots or Spanish Inquisition - not that anyone was expecting them - but countless other Monty Python moments were alluded to during Holy Flying Circus.

Loosely based upon on the furore surrounding the release of Life Of Brian in 1979, which saw the self-appointed guardians of decency and religious right unite in opposition to a film none of them had actually seen, Holy Flying Circus adopted the Pythons' surreal style and sense of humour, including all the frequently indulgent and self-referential aspects, to tell what was essentially a disturbing and depressing story.

That such a potentially perilous conceit worked so effectively was down to the confidence with which it was executed, the consistently inventive script, a first-rate cast and the fact that it was actually funny in its own right. Sometimes you have to be very silly indeed to make a serious point.

Purveyors of elegant pastiche for almost 30 years, The Comic Strip - aka writer/director Peter Richardson - mixed recent political history with British post-war thriller to produce The Hunt For Tony Blair.

Loosely based upon The Thirty Nine Steps, with a multitude of other film references thrown in for good measure, it told of how the former Labour prime minister became a fugitive from the law following the invasion of Iraq, WMD fiasco and attempted assassination of a stage memory man.
Atmospherically enhanced by the stark black and white photography, The Hunt For Tony Blair was characteristically well crafted, continually clever, crammed with comic details and energetically paced. Over an hour's duration the conceit was stretched pretty thin, subtlety frequently went as AWOL as Blair, and there was a noticeable absence of belly laughs, but The Comic Strip once again proved its pedigree as one of British TV comedy's truly class acts.

Stephen Mangan, managing a very creditable vocal impersonation, starred as a bright eyed, bushy tailed and cheerfully amoral Blair, who also provided a suitably disingenuous narration. No Alexei Sayle, alas, but the rest of The Comic Strip repertory company were present and correct in a variety of supporting roles. Even swathed beneath layers of costume and make up, Rik Mayall was instantly recognizable by his shameless overacting, but it was Nigel Planer who stole the show as an oleaginous Peter Mandelson or, as investigating officer DI Hutton (Robbie Coltrane) preferred to call him, "Squealer".

The only false note was when the story quite literally went off the beaten track to visit Margaret Thatcher's country retreat, shared with obsequious butler Tebbitt and a skeleton in the closet that turned out to be Denis. Jennifer Saunders played Thatcher, having already played Meryl Streep playing Margaret Thatcher in The Comic Strip's Strike. In a perverse and curious case of life imitating art, the real Meryl Streep is soon to be seen as Thatcher in a feature film called The Iron Lady.

Sky 1 is producing some very decent comedy at the moment, the latest example of which is Spy. Darren Boyd stars as Tim, a recently divorced, directionless, unambitious 30-something stuck in a dead end sales assistant job. Stung by his nine year old son's contempt, he applies for a post within the civil service, only to be inadvertently recruited by MI5.

The show doesn't even bother explaining this particular plot contrivance, possibly because there is a lot of setting up to be getting on with, more likely because they have correctly guessed that nobody really cares. Everybody is impatient for hapless Tim to get on with some comedy spying.

Most of episode one was concerned with establishing the comic scenario, so it's probably too early to pass judgment on Spy. But there were some very encouraging jokes, the characters are interesting and Boyd displays an impressive aptitude for slapstick which, I suspect, will come in handy in the future.

The eminently watchable Robert Lindsay co-stars as Tim's suave but secretly alcoholic "control", bearing an altogether disconcerting physical resemblance to Alan Sugar. Although on this showing Sugar's recruitment policy would appear to be a lot more stringent than MI5's.