Harry Venning

The Spa stars the incomparable Rebecca Front as the long-suffering head of a health, beauty and fitness centre, where staff and clients alike prove a constant source of grief, inconvenience and aggravation. The writer and creator is Derren Litten, who hit comedy pay dirt with Benidorm, ITV's most successful sitcom in years. Cynics might say ITV's only successful sitcom in years.

Despite the involvement of Front and Litten, I still didn't expect much from The Spa. Possibly because the basic premise reminded me of the late and lamentable The Brittas Empire, but more likely because the show is being broadcast on Sky Living. In all my years of flicking up and down the endless array of channels on offer, I have never found reason to stop and dally at Sky Living, or even work out what it was there for.

Well, knock me down with a gym ball, but The Spa is rather splendid. The characters are fun, the storylines outrageous, and the script fearless and successful in its pursuit of big out-loud laughs.

Rebecca Front holds centre stage as Alison, former Leighton Buzzard slimmer of the decade, whose imperious management style comprises brutal insensitivity complemented by a total absence of tact. Front fends off scene-stealing turns from a talented cast, most notably Frances Barber as boozed-up best mate Ginny, Tim Healy as the handyman who is quite literally too big for his breeches and Litten himself - it's your show, mate, you cast yourself in it - as an overweight, wheelchair-bound fitness instructor.

The second series of Charlie Brooker's technology-based, self-contained dramas Black Mirror kicked off with a chiller set in the near future entitled Be Right Back. Hayley Atwell stars as Martha, a bereaved girlfriend who assuages her grief with the help of a useful telephone app that draws upon the departed's online footprint to offer a virtual form of communication beyond the grave.

Brooker's trademark cynical sense of humour is noticeable by its absence as the first 30 minutes concentrates on Martha's loneliness, desperation and unbearable sense of loss. But then things take a distinct turn for the sci-fi, with Martha taking delivery of what can best be described as a grow-in-the-bath android to give her late boyfriend actual physical form.

Much like Martha and her android, Brooker walked the idea around for a while, realised it was going nowhere and ultimately opted for abandonment. To the writer's credit he resisted the temptation to take the tale into the realms of terror, although I can't help wondering if this would have provided a far more satisfying conclusion than sticking the poor surrogate up in the loft.

But for all its flaws, Black Mirror remains compulsive viewing. Well made, well acted and never less than imaginative, it is one of the few dramas around that explores ideas rather than scenarios, employing a dramatically diverse palette of tones in the process.

Having achieved a highly commendable runner-up position on Strictly Come Dancing, Dani Harmer's elevated star status is reflected in the fact her former CBBC show Dani's House has been upgraded to the new Dani's Castle.

For Dani has come into an inheritance from one of those previously unmentioned distant relatives much beloved of sitcom writers, and off she relocates to Ireland to claim her grand country pile. With it come some new friends - including a cousin with whom she has to share the bequest - a library with secret passageways leading from it, a mountain of unpaid bills and several ghosts displaying various degrees of malevolence.

Much screaming, misunderstanding and running down corridors follows, in the great tradition of Abbott & Costello, Laurel & Hardy, Scooby & Shaggy and every other comic character that ever crossed paths with the supernatural.

Indeed, the set-up is exploited with such verve, energy and imagination that you hardly notice those members of the youthful cast who are - how can I put this in a supportive, nurturing way? - a trifle wooden. In fact, the inclusion of at least one such actor in every CBBC show would suggest the channel has some sort of quota to fill.

Wooden teenage actors I can forgive, but not the imposition of a horribly distracting and totally unnecessary laughter track. Not a full-throated studio audience roar of amusement, you understand, but a rather cursory group chuckle that sounds like a few passers-by sharing a joke among themselves. Laughter tracks are an abomination. Dani's Castle is genuinely funny and the producers should trust their young audience to find it so, unaided and alone.

A comedy drama that actually satisfies the criteria of both genres, My Mad Fat Diary offers a unique and uncompromising perspective on adolescent angst that distresses and delights by turns. Visual gimmicks - flashbacks, fantasies and animated squiggles leaping from the page - are used sparingly but effectively, allowing the focus to stay fixed on Rae and Sharon Rooney's commanding and engagingly natural central performance.

Some of the humour feels a little forced, such as Rae's mum's illegal immigrant boyfriend forever transported around in the boot of the car, but for the most part it rings painfully true.

Blandings first episode threw up nothing more distressing than the sight of Lord Emsworth's pig man dancing on a pub table in a state of drunken dishevelment. His lordship's hog, the Empress, responded to her beloved handler's subsequent incarceration by going on hunger strike, seriously jeopardising her chances in the forthcoming fattest pig competition at the county fair.

And the silliness didn't stop there, with love-struck nieces, unwelcome suitors, silly-arse sons, mendacious magistrates, fierce aunts and resourceful butlers all thrown into the mix.

Timothy Spall stars as the blustering Lord Emsworth, with Jennifer Saunders as his indomitable sister Connie, and Jack Farthing - in scene-stealing form - as his son and heir Freddie.

Personally, I don't think Wodehouse transfers to the screen - his genius for imagery and turn of phrase inevitably gets left on the page - but Blandings' combination of period detail, star turns and amiable imbecility filled half an hour entertainingly enough for me. This view wasn't unanimously held in my household, however, where Wodehouse's inter-war world of opulence and privilege proved totally alien, largely incomprehensible and relentlessly unfunny to my ten year-old daughter.

Great Night Out is a comedy drama about four thirtysomething mates from Stockport, whose principal interests are football, banter, women and the pub. That is also about as deep as their characterisation goes, leaving the quartet looking for all the world like stereotypes in search of a lager advert to occupy.

Episode 1 ambles along inoffensively enough, neatly interweaving a trio of plots concerning salsa classes, an anniversary celebration and a runaway groom on a London-bound train, but despite several winning performances I never really engaged or identified with any of the main characters.

This was a problem further compounded by two scene-stealing cameos from Jessica Gunning and Alex Lowe, as an obnoxiously insensitive party crasher and an endearingly bizarre Lancashire salsa teacher respectively. The characters charged with actually carrying the series looked very dull by comparison.

Great Night Out has so far provided nothing more than an okay night in, but things may improve as the series settles into its run. A few more laughs certainly wouldn't go amiss.

Fit, the latest sketch show from CBBC, is based upon the themes of sport, fitness and general well-being. However, it is elastic enough in its approach to encompass a spoof charity appeal requesting fart donations to help power wind turbines. Indeed, fart gags are such an inherent part of the CBBC comedy output that I sometimes suspect they have a quota to fill.

Like most sketch shows the quality of the humour is wildly inconsistent, but the performances are energetic, the observations sharp and the approach imaginative. Most importantly, the turnover is satisfyingly rapid, with no sketch allowed to outstay its welcome.

Clare in the Community is back and - eek! - it opens with a body. Have Harry Venning and David Ramsden turned our favourite social worker into Miss Marple? The corpse turns out to be one of the many furry animals in Clare's household named after husband Brian. I shall return to the series, but this is a brilliant opener.

I was initially resistant to the charms of Miranda Hart's award-guzzling sitcom, but having watched it with my ten-year-old daughter I have found her enthusiasm contagious and am a convert.

The Pantomime Dame - review

My Christmas came early this year, courtesy of BBC4, and two splendid documentaries that turned out to have a lot more in common than their titles might suggest - Michael Grade's History of the Pantomime Dame, and When Wrestling was Golden - Grapples, Grunts and Grannies.