Harry Venning

Series five of Outnumbered got off to a very solid start with an episode that skilfully wove together such diverse threads as swimming galas, missing hamsters, school plays, malfunctioning printers and even Jimmy Savile.

The serial child abuser and former BBC employee provided the basis of one of the show's funniest exchanges, sending a signal to the rest of the comedy world that sufficient time has passed for open season to be declared on the peroxide pervert.

Outnumbered is still one of the finest and funniest sitcoms on TV, maintaining a very high standard in both performances and writing. But at the risk of sounding ageist, the kids are getting on a bit. Much of the show's early charm derived from the wildly inappropriate, painfully precocious and gleefully uninhibited utterances of the young cast, particularly cute but caustic Karen.

There is still comedy to be mined from adolescence, of course, but it is a wildly different beast - and a stroppy, self-conscious one at that.

The great skill of Outnumbered is to keep its humour just the right side of believable. Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer's House of Fools travels the wrong side, but not as far as you might think. Unbridled absurdity soon becomes tiresome - Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy being a case in point - which is why House of Fools is careful to establish some sort of norm from which it can then deviate.

The starting point is that most traditional of sitcom set-ups: the flat share. Bob is the owner of the property, Vic his infuriating tenant. A parade of comic grotesques pop in uninvited and unannounced, accompanied by some wilfully cheap animations and rubbish props, adding further mayhem to whatever spurious plotline is driving that week's episode.

This week, the flat played host to a pop-up restaurant intended to impress a probation officer, who was subsequently served a coconut-topped pizza made of grout.

I watched it in a state of bemused delight, punctuated by the occasional guffaw, but then I've always been a Vic and Bob fan. Non-fans, I suspect, won't get past the bemused stage.

Adapted from the books by Lin Oliver and Henry Winkler, based upon Winkler's own experience of growing up with dyslexia, Hank Zipzer is a fast-paced, frantic and very funny comedy, with serious undertones, from the CBBC channel.

Several aspects of episode one did jar, however. Firstly, our schoolboy anti-hero's extremely American-sounding name is never explained. Secondly, I'd like to think that modern schools are sufficiently enlightened around dyslexia not to punish a student with the condition by making him read his essay aloud in assembly. Thirdly, the quality of the acting among the young cast covers a wide spectrum, and that's putting it charitably.

Minor quibbles apart, Hank Zipzer is great fun, cleverly constructed and eminently likeable. It also boasts an excellent adult cast, including Felicity Montagu as Hank's bad-tempered, sword-wielding teacher Miss Adolf, and Winkler himself oozes charm as a rock'n'roll music teacher, appropriately named Mr Rock.

The Kumars are no longer at number 42. Indeed, they are not even at the BBC anymore. After an eight-year absence, their chat show has been revived by Sky1, relocated to a room behind a minimart and provided with Daniel Radcliffe, Chevy Chase and Olivia Colman as inaugural guests.

The trouble is, I still don't get it. Obviously, it's subverting television conventions. True, nobody else seems to have a problem with the absurdity of the set-up. But to me and my far-too-literal mind, it doesn't make any sense. How come the Kumars have a chat show in their home?

Despite being incomprehensible to me, I find the show entertaining enough, especially if the guests play along with their hosts and don't try to compete with them. Chase looked lost, Colman couldn't contain her amusement and Radcliffe was charm personified, and effortlessly witty with it.

Catherine Tate's Nan gave half an hour over to the comedian's bilious, racist, cantankerous and foul-mouthed septuagenarian, which was at least 20 minutes too much. Nan is basically one joke, and a good one at that, but her natural habitat is the sketch show, not the sitcom.

Two Doors Down was a one-off comedy drama centred around a Hogmanay party in a lower-middle-class Scottish cul-de-sac, which highlighted the many dangers of mixing alcohol and neighbours.

There was absolutely nothing new about the set-up or surprising about how the story developed, but the first-rate cast delivered some excellent dialogue, there were several memorable slapstick moments and you were left with the distinct impression that writer Simon Carlyle held his assortment of borderline-grotesque characters in great affection.

Yonderland review

It is a lovely idea, full of comic potential and playing to the strengths of the multi-talented cast. First episodes are always precarious, but Yonderland boldly negotiated all the pitfalls of exposition with imagination, wit and verve.

Gigglebiz stars Justin Fletcher - Cbeebies colossus and veritable god to the preschool demographic - in his own sketch show. Fletcher's vast array of comic characters include the superhero Captain Adorable, Arthur Sleep the narcoleptic newscaster, Gail Force the weather forecaster and Packed Lunch Pete, who never gets to eat his sandwiches.

As you would imagine, slapstick features prominently and the humour isn't overly sophisticated, but Fletcher is a very likeable, versatile performer working with a script that is constantly inventive. I found it genuinely funny, and certainly more entertaining than the majority of BBC3's vast sketch show output.

Conventional TV wisdom dictates that sitcoms about actors don't work, which just goes to show how little conventional TV wisdom knows. Toast of London may infuriate with its wildly inconsistent jokes and underwritten storylines, but it is great fun, frequently hilarious and oddly charming.

Last week saw Toast working with a director who crushes insubordination among the cast by squeezing wayward actors' testicles until they are compliant. "Benedict Cumberbatch lasted less than half an hour," Toast is warned.

Ambassadors stars Robert Webb and David Mitchell as diplomats in an oil-rich, but human rights-impoverished ex-Soviet state called Tazbekistan.

When the pair are not working to sell British-made helicopters to the brutally oppressive regime, they are trying to spring their countrymen from prison, hosting interminable functions, fending off blackmailers and surrendering to the demands of local customs, such as drinking one's body weight in vodka.

First impressions were favourable - the animated title sequence is fabulous. The show isn't bad either, once you divest yourself of all expectations. Despite the presence of its two stars, Ambassadors is neither sitcom nor sketch show, but a comedy drama that takes its drama very seriously.

Mitchell and Webb come across exactly the same as every other vehicle they've starred in, but they are both charismatic performers and serve the material well.

The highpoint of episode one was the self-obsessed actor - is there any other kind? - sent by the British Council to perform his turgid, one-man production of Frankenstein, and nearly creating several diplomatic rifts in the process.