Harry Venning

What is That Mitchell and Webb Look? I suspect it is the look of incredulity that passed over my face when I heard they'd got another series. Extremely clever and well performed by two very personable comics, it could still be a lot funnier.

What is the point in parodying the sword and sorcery genre when it is already mired in absurdity? Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire never comes close to answering the question.

Impressively lavish in its production values, the show desperately needs more jokes put in, or the few it had taken out, to succeed as either broad comedy or fantasy adventure. As it is, it totters ineffectually between the two and feels like a very, very, very long sketch indeed.

Sean Maguire takes the title role as the swashbuckling rebel, who, with a motley band of ineffectual comrades in tow, has the temerity to challenge the authority of the Evil Empire. The Evil Empire's local representative Chancellor Dongalor is played with admirable gusto, but no finesse whatsoever, by Matt Lucas.

Since leaving EastEnders for Hollywood, Maguire has clearly put a lot of effort into developing a convincing physique and the requisite American accent to go with it. And, to be fair, Maguire is actually rather good as Mandoon, displaying a deft touch for self-effacing, mock heroic comedy.

Lucas, on the other hand, is given only the feeblest of characterisation to work with - variations upon cheery, psychotic camp - which becomes very tiresome, very quickly. Every baddie role, even such an idiotic one, needs a little bit of genuine menace, which was sadly and totally lacking from Lucas' performance.

Krod Mandoon does have its funny moments, but there just aren't enough of them. However, there is something likeable about the show and its admirable, if hapless efforts to entertain. Like Krod Mandoon himself, it is endearing but ineffectual.

Hope Springs is a comedy drama concerning four female ex-cons on the run with £3 million, whose plans for a sun-drenched retirement in Barbados go awry and they end up in the far north of Scotland instead, where they buy a dilapidated hotel. Episode one had its work cut out, contriving to get our feisty foursome into the hotel business, as well as introducing various locals with hidden agendas, dark secrets, lovable eccentricities and romantic yearnings. Not to forget the hit man on their trail, out for vengeance and return of the £3 million.

And just when you thought the sleepy village of Hope Springs couldn't get any busier, we were informed of a recent unsolved murder in the village. All of which asks for a superhuman suspension of disbelief from the viewer, which I wasn't prepared to give. Hope Springs is a cluttered mess and a daft one at that. Nice scenery, though, as you would expect from a Sunday evening drama. And Alex Kingston was rather good as the gang's leader.

Based upon the novel by John O'Farrell, May Contain Nuts is a light but effective satire upon the middle-class obsession with education.

When it becomes clear that their eldest daughter Molly will never pass the entrance exam to their private school of choice, Alice and David Chaplin resort to extreme measures - Alice will disguise herself as an 11 year old and take the exam for her.

"Nobody notices ugly children," reasons David and Alice is dressed down accordingly, complete with lank hair, thick-framed glasses and stick-on spots. Crucially, for the drama, Shirley Henderson as Alice is actually pretty convincing in the disguise.

The pilot for Mumbai Calling was broadcast so long ago that the catch-up introduction to the new series was almost an episode in itself. For those who missed it, or have scant recall of what happened, the pilot saw Wembley-born Kenny Gupta (Sanjeev Bhaskar) sent off to Mumbai to manage a call centre, along with troubleshooting assessor Terri Johnson, who turned out to be a woman (Daisy Beaumont). An attractive woman. You get the idea.

And it's not bad. It's not great either, but there is enough funny material to inspire cautious optimism, and the central characters definitely show potential, which is the most important factor in a sitcom's success. There is no laughter track, always a good thing, and the sheer originality of the setting merits some acknowledgement. I say give it a chance.

Oddly enough, for a television comedy, many of the best scenes occurred as reported action off screen. Such as the episode's funniest moment in which the India-based team inadvertently directed a funeral cortege away from Milton Keynes Crematorium and into Woburn Safari Park, where the corpse was set upon by lions.

I laughed a lot at that bit and also derived much pleasure from Nitin Ganatra's over the top performance as the amiable but ineffectual middle manager Dev. Every good sitcom needs a scene stealer.

Farewell to Pulling which has been, well, pulled. I can only assume that Pulling's cynical and acerbic tone did not chime with the brave, new, sunny sitcom world ushered in by the incorrigibly romantic Gavin & Stacey. Pulling went out with a funny, outrageous, inspired and frequently shocking one-hour special that made a total mockery of the decision to axe it.

"You don't have to live with a man who makes you unhappy," Donna advises Louise, "unless you have a child. Or a mortgage."

The show finished on something of an emotional cliffhanger, which allows for the possibility of a change of heart from BBC3 Comedy. Which - given that these are the same people who have commissioned a second series of the rancid Coming of Age - seems unlikely.

"Don't mind Eddie, he likes to call a spade a spade. It's when he calls me a spade that I mind!"

Such is the power of sitcom that those two lines from Love Thy Neighbour are still fresh in my memory after nearly 40 years. Possibly because it is such a dreadful joke, possibly because every joke in Love Thy Neighbour was a variation on it.

Back in the seventies and early eighties, the humble sitcom was the meat and potatoes of British broadcasting, providing millions with unsophisticated but satisfying fare. This was before the genre was elevated to an art form, subjected to quality control and critically scrutinised to death. Or called a genre, for that matter.

Beyond a Joke takes us back to those glory days and places classic, and not so classic, British sitcoms into their social and historical context.

Which makes Beyond a Joke sound as dry as dust, but it really isn't. For one thing, the programme takes full advantage of the archives, cherry picking all of the best moments to make its point. And in a welcome change from the usual clip show convention of recruiting unknown stand-up comedians and former children's TV presenters to blab inanities, it invites actual informed opinion from such illustrious contributors as Tony Benn, John Cleese and Dick Clement.

Episode one was all about class, a rich vein of humour that sitcoms of the period mined extensively. We saw Captain Mainwaring bristle with indignation as Sergeant Wilson joined the golf club, Basil Fawlty fawning over an aristocratic guest, Margot Ledbetter locking horns with the local council. Plus Stan from On The Buses trying to sneak a dolly bird upstairs past his disapproving extended family. Which accurately reflected the enduring post-war housing shortage, but made a less than convincing case for Reg Varney as a sex god.

All of which was linked by Dave Lamb's suitably jaunty narration.

The four King Georges performing as a boy band, Henry VIII's murderous reign as an episode of This is Your Life, a medieval washing powder commercial advocating the cleansing properties of wee, a Stone Age arts magazine informing viewers how to preserve a beloved relative's skull in plaster. Welcome to the world of Horrible Histories.

Based upon the best-selling series by Terry Deary, Horrible Histories scours the past for interesting, bizarre, unpleasant and unpalatable facts and uses them as the basis for some seriously funny, beautifully performed and endlessly inventive sketches.

Unsurprisingly, sewage, savagery and bloodshed feature prominently and there are plenty of crowd-pleasing fart and poo gags. There is even a talking rat. All guaranteed to keep a CBBC audience entertained, amused, appalled and disgusted. Who knows, the little buggers might even learn something. For example, Vikings used to take Saturdays off from murder and pillaging to attend to their personal grooming. Didn't know that, did you?

I have one criticism of the show. The poo used to shower the medieval town councillors was totally unconvincing. Wrong colour, wrong consistency, wrong texture. If the BBC special effects department aren't up to the job, there is only one way to ensure authenticity. When it comes to our children's education there should be no half measures.

The nation can breathe a collective sigh of relief. The new Reggie Perrin is not an insult to the memory of a much-beloved original, in fact, it's a rather good sitcom in its own right. Simon Nye and David Nobbs' remake cranks up the misanthropy and the joke count, with Martin Clunes bringing his own brand of caustic charm to the role of the executive suffering existential angst.

A good pun is hard to find. So well done Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle for its opening credits, which feature the comic driving an enormous multicoloured clown car.

The show that follows is basically a half-hour stand-up routine on a given theme, punctuated by the occasional pertinent sketch.

Lee's comedy is something of an acquired taste ranging from the esoteric, through the inventive to the positively bizarre, but he is never less than original and frequently inspired.