Ian Wolf

The Matt Lucas Awards is the radio adaptation of the BBC Radio 2 show And The Winner Is... in which Matt Lucas and his panel of guests - this week it was Jason Manford, Henning Wehn and Graeme Garden - present awards in unusual categories.

The main worry with any radio adaptation is will it carry off the transfer from radio to telly? By the looks of things I'd say that it's doubtful, which would be a huge shame because I'm a big fan of the radio show.

To me it seems that the TV version has strained too far from the original format. Let's start from the beginning with the opening titles. When I saw the original pilot that was on the BBC website some time ago (and which I've reviewed previously) there were some things I enjoyed, like the catchy "excruciating theme tune."

The song is good, but I can't stand the animated opening titles, which were just too cheesy. You don't need to mute your TV, but you do need a blind to cover the scene until the show properly starts. Also, a word of advice: don't put a character from a much more successful show (in this case Vicky Pollard) in the opening titles, reminding everyone that the older show was brilliant and this new show may well not be as funny...

Moving on to the actual show, the pilot was set in a ritzy studio while the series is set in a mock-up of what is supposed to by Lucas's flat. According to a blog by co-creator of the series Ashley Blaker, they thought the ritzy studio didn't work. But I don't think the flat works either. It comes across as a bit gimmicky for me.

Then you have certain awards in which the guests are made to do stupid activities, like drawing a nude model and having to sing terrible football songs while dressed up as the singers in question. It just gets more cheesy as the show goes along.

I hope the series improves, but to be honest I have my doubts. But if the BBC does decide to cancel it, I hope they don't get rid of it all together and it returns to the radio.

This satirical panel game has been running on BBC Radio Wales since 2009, but this most recent, sixth series, has seen some changes.

The most notable of these is that it's got a new host. Previously hosted by Justin Waite, a local breakfast radio host, it's now presented by Dan Mitchell, the runner-up on ITV1's Show Me The Funny.

My feelings towards this show are similar to Radio Scotland's The Guessing Game, really, in that it is mixed. It's below par compared to the other satirical comedies around like Have I Got News for You and The News Quiz. Also, the final round of What's The Story? is just HIGNFY's "Missing Words" round without the guest publication, which is often the funniest bit...

Then again, there were some amusing asides. The main one this time came from panellist Elis James who talked about a friend of his who went to a strip club in Las Vegas who became as Welsh as you could possibly get.

What's The Story? has it's moments, and it's nice to see Radio Wales putting some money into comedy, but I'm not sure this is the best comedy they can make.

Hosted by Clive Anderson, The Guessing Game is a brand new panel game on BBC Radio Scotland. Among those featured alongside Anderson were the show's (annoying) house band Gus and Fin plus One, and this week's contestants: Rory Bremner, Tom Allen and Alex Horne.

As the title implies, the object of the game is to guess the answers to difficult questions. The usual scoring system is two points if you get the answer right and one point for an amusing or good guess. Questions included: "What is the difference between Justin Bieber and banana?" and "Who gave away their music rights from beyond the grave?"

There were some amusing asides from one or two of the panellists, mainly Horne, but other than that there wasn't much going for it. The problem for me is that this format has been done before, and much better, by shows that are already on. QI on TV and The Unbelievable Truth on radio handle the subjects of trivia and unusual information in a much funnier manner.

Perhaps the issue's the scoring system. With QI and The Unbelievable Truth, you often end up with negative scores. In The Guessing Game this doesn't happen. Let's hope that the show will improve as the series goes along...

This is the third attempt to put JAM on the box, the BBC having done it previously in 1994 and 1999. Parsons and Merton appear in each episode, with guests appearing being Sue Perkins, Gyles Brandreth, Stephen Fry, Liza Tarbuck, Graham Norton, Josie Lawrence and Julian Clary. There are also a fair number of new contestants: Jason Manford, Miles Jupp, Ruth Jones, Phill Jupitus, John Sergeant and Russell Tovey.

The format is the same, but there are some obvious changes; for a start, there's no scorer sitting next to Parsons. Instead he just has the scores on a screen, and the clock is started by a large button next to him. There's also a little bell rang to indicate they are moving into the final round.

Some things do remain the same, though. The studio is designed to look like the art deco BBC Radio Theatre, where the radio series is normally recorded. For some reason, however, the studio lights change from blue to purple when the subjects start. Why they need to do this I have no idea. I find the camerawork even more irritating. There's no need to cut from here to there every three seconds.

However, there's still much to enjoy from this show. I for one enjoy the little amusing asides that go through out each episodes. My personal favourite was in the fourth episode when the panel kept making jokes about Miles Jupp being the supposed love child of Gyles Brandreth. The jokes just kept snowballing throughout.

With regards to the TV adaptation, I know that there will always be people who will insist that it's not as good as the one on radio, but there are always people who complain about TV adaptations of radio shows. If we rejected every TV adaptation of a radio adaptation out of hand we wouldn't have had the TV successes of shows like Whose Line is it Anyway? or Little Britain.

I'd love to see more episodes of the TV version of Just a Minute; but I doubt they'll produce them. Unless they want to celebrate the show's 50th anniversary, that is, and given that Parsons is 88 years old that might be a bit dangerous.

This week there was the last of two special episodes on BBC Radio 4 that were recorded in India (a documentary about the India episodes is on Radio 4 at 11.30 on Monday 2nd April), featuring regulars Nicholas Parsons and Paul Merton, English comedian Marcus Brigstocke, and Indian comedians Cyrus Broacha and Anuvab Pal. Topics for discussion included "It's just not cricket" and "Mumbai traffic".

The main difference between this and the normal British edition is that the Indians appear to be much more competitive. Although there are those who will like the faster-paced action, there are those, including myself, that feel it disturbs the flow too much with so many challenges. Still, it makes for an interesting change...

Gigglebox weekly #43 - Hit the Road Jack

This week saw a new comedy show starring Jack Whitehall on Channel 4. The problem is that it's a bit hard to categorise it.

Gigglebox weekly #42 - Mark Lawson & Frank Skinner

There was very little in the way of new comedy on TV this week, but there was an hour-long, in-depth interview with Frank Skinner on BBC Four.

This is Sarah Millican's first steps into a television series of her own, after appearing on nearly every panel show under the sun!

There have been complaints from some quarters that Sarah Millican's possibly the most overexposed comedian currently around. I personally don't think that's the case. Yes, she appears on a lot of panel shows, but she always the guest - she doesn't host any or appear as a team captain, unlike David Mitchell for example.

The Sarah Millican Television Programme is part stand-up, part talk show. Each show covers two different television genres, this week being "animals" and "dating", with the guidance of a guest expert (Chris Packham and Tracey Cox respectively). It has to be said that she seemed to look a bit uncomfortable dealing with this format and perhaps the given material, but I don't doubt she'll soon cope with it as the series goes along.

Millican is certainly funny and the show is very good, but it does have one or two problems, namely with video cameras. There's annoying gimmickry with the "Millicam" in which a video camera is sent into the studio audience and certain people answer Millican's questions. The main problem, though, is that they also filmed the audience members holding the Millicam, so the Millicam instantly becomes redundant...

Then there was Sarah's guest interview with her own father Phillip, during which she wore a silly headcam, which gets one laugh at the beginning but then of course just becomes rather tiresome.

However, other than those minor issues, I'd recommend you giving The Sarah Millican Television Programme a viewing.

Following on from a successful pilot in late 2010, BBC Four's commissioned a full series of this comedy drama loosely based on the novels by Douglas Adams, and starring Stephen Mangan as the holistic detective.

The first episode in the series, which sees Dirk deal with a murder that has links to the Pentagon, contains some funny situations created by Howard Overman, the man behind the adaptation. Such things include Dirk breaking into a house of the murder victim by smashing a glass door being witnessed by those inside. Then there's Dirk surveillance operation which goes completely wrong thanks to his partner/assistant MacDuff's (Darren Boyd) new chair.

However, personally speaking I'm one of those people who would have been happier with the original stories being adapted for the screen rather than having new ones developed. While it does contain some elements from the original books, such as Zen navigation (instead of using a map to go where you want to go, you follow someone who looks like they know where they go, often leading you to somewhere you need to be), it would be nice to see Adams's original tales on screen.

Still, if you too are annoyed by the lack of faithfulness in this adaptation, there are always the more faithful Radio 4 stories starring Harry Enfield, which does follow Adam's work much more closely (Electric Monks and Norse Gods included).

Pramface, a sitcom about a 16-year-old boy who accidentally gets a girl pregnant, is one of a series of new comedies recently commissioned by BBC Three, having axed most of their old shows. All I can say is that I hope the rest of the new output is better than this.

To give you an idea of where I stand on it, I laughed once. The laugh itself came from a somewhat old-hack gag about a boy "pleasuring himself" and "reaching climax" as his mother enters the room.

Nothing original to it, apart from the fact he was listening to a sex audio tape of his own devising, which was set to play the theme from Top Gear at the critical moment. Now, when I wrote about comedy in Top Gear last week, that's not quiet how I envisioned it. Still it's better than seeing one of those three presenters doing that act (and I apologise for putting that rather disturbing image into your head right now).

There were several problems with Pramface for me. I didn't like most of the characters; there was too much incidental music for my liking; and in terms of the gross-out comedy it appears to be going for I've seen much funnier examples elsewhere. Give me Robert Webb in Peep Show eating a half-cooked dog leg any day of the week.