Ian Wolf

For those not aware of this show, The Unbelievable Truth is a panel game, and as is law when it comes to panel games, it involves David Mitchell.

He acts as host of "the panel game built on truth and lies", in which four comics deliver a lecture on a subject which is mostly lies, except for five pieces of unlikely true information which have to be smuggled past the rest of the panel.

In this week's edition, Tony Hawks gave a 'lecture' on mice, Arthur Smith on Sir Walter Raleigh, Rhod Gilbert on soup, and Mitchell's 10 O'Clock Live co-star Charlie Brooker on his specialist subject of television.

The show is rather like QI, in that it is partly about unlikely trivia. Among the things mentioned were the fact that Bruce Forsyth first appeared on the TV before World War Two began and that Raleigh's widow kept his severed head in a velvet bag which she carried around with her (although this fact has already been on QI).

Mind you, a lot of the lies mentioned are things you really hope are true, such as Swindon having a "Day of the mouse" in which the mice get to rule the town, or Raleigh farting during the coronation of Charles I.

My only problem with The Unbelievable Truth is that I think some of the facts might be wrong. One of the things that regularly crop up is obscure but daft American laws, like how in Nebraska you have to brew soup if you are also selling beer. I always suspect that these 'laws' are just made up and just included because they sound funny.

Awfully Good is one of those shows which, I presume, is only around to fill airtime with archive footage. In this case it's with adverts which host David Walliams claims are so bad that they are good.

I have to admit that as far as archive shows go, this one is indeed awfully good. It's a very simple set up. Just show a quick ad and you can get a laugh from something as simple as the name (examples include a diet pill called "Ayds" and a toy dog called "Gaylord") or the product itself. It's really quite amazing that products like golf clubs you can urinate into, the flatulence deodorizer and spray-on hair haven't caught on. Incredibly amazing, in fact.

The most excruciating part of the show was actually the adverts which were either racist, sexist or in some other way inappropriate. It'' shocking to think that only a few decades ago advertisements could openly imply that poor time management is the fault of your wife not giving you enough Kellogg's. Kellogg's seem to be a prime offender, too, having also commissioned an advert featuring a black footballer suffering from a white eye.

The best part, for me, was seeing adverts which I myself could remember. Being a relatively young man most of the adverts were before my time, and many came from abroad, but just occasionally I could see something which made me go: "Yes! I remember that. God, that was rubbish." I'm looking at you Selfstyle Windows, and We Buy Any Car for that matter.

But before I go, I'd like to point out that the worst ads in the show we not those in the programme. It was those during the ad breaks for Awfully Good. They were not so much awfully good, rather just plain awful.

Back for a second series, for those not aware of the show on the digital channel Dave, each episode of One Night Stand takes place in the hometown of the closing act.

These kinds of show only really use the town as a backdrop - a selling point for the show - and in this case stand-up and Direct Line advertiser Chris Addison performed in Manchester.

Also starring was Addison's co-star in his failed sitcom Lab Rats Jo Enright, who impressed with her talent for impersonation (and pigeon noises); and Craig Campbell, who was arguably the best performer on the night.

Campbell's a great storyteller, with tales of rude song lyrics, tripping on mushrooms and killing badgers. It's really quite a shame Campbell isn't British because he deserves to be the star of his own episode. Jason Cook also filmed for this episode, though his set - and an interview with Chris Addison - is only available online.

I'm going to say something which is going to make me unpopular with most critics - I actually like this show.

Having read other reviews of Campus, the vast majority, especially those in the tabloids, derided this new sitcom by the team behind Green Wing. Most said it was bad because it's too similar to Green Wingp. Are these people mad? That's like saying, "This country has a rubbish football team. It's too much like Brazil's."

Campus, like Green Wing, is great, especially the egotistical, power-crazed and bigoted vice chancellor of Kirke University, Jonty de Wolfe, played by Andy Nyman (most famous for being Derren Brown's right-hand man).

Nyman's character also got panned by the critics, arguing his remarks went too far, comparing him unfavourably to David Brent (the fact they have the same beard doesn't help, I guess). There are key differences here, though.

Brent is a middle-manager, is meant to be a realistic character, and in the end his incompetence results in him getting the boot. Wolfe is the master of a surreal and chaotic world, answering to nobody, and as such is able to get away with what he does because there is no-one able to stop him - at least not yet, but there is another character who is due to appear later in the series who might be able to stop Wolfe.

Among the other Green Wing associations made were comparing their characters to Campus'. The misogynistic English Literature professor Matt Beer (Joseph Millson) was compared to Guy Secretan - and to be fair there are quite a lot of similarities - and his relationship with Maths lecturer Imogen Moffat (Lisa Jackson) is similar to that between Guy and Caroline Todd.

I also read one critic comparing mechanical engineering lecturer Lydia Tennant (Dolly Wells) to Sue White, which I think is totally wrong. With all of her idiosyncrasies, odd mannerisms and pomposity I'd argue if anything that she's more like Alan Statham. It is in fact Wolfe who is most like Sue White, but only with much more power.

I have to admit, though, there are some problems with the show. Firstly, the camerawork is quite unprofessional, with some dodgy cuts (watch the scene when Wolfe is on a megaphone talking to a female student about a degree in arseology - his left hand is suddenly on a rail, then on the megaphone and back on the rail again) in this episode in particular.

And in the end I just know Channel 4 will axe the show. The first episode was watched by only 718,000 people, as previously mentioned several times it's been written off by the critics, and nothing I've written will change any of the minds of the bigwigs who run the network.

But in truth, the main reason that Campus is on Channel 4 in the first place is because they decided to axe Green Wing; so if you don't like Campus, don't blame the writers or the other people behind the show, blame Channel 4 for axing the original great work in the first place.

This panel show began its forty-first series this week, and as usual it features a lot of things that we're all familiar with: Ian Hislop's in-depth political knowledge, Paul Merton's extraordinary improvisational abilities, a biased scoring system and rubbish but amusing pictures to keep the cost of making the show down.

Typically there were some good moments in this episode, hosted by Jack Dee, like Hislop's gag about Obama supplying light sabres to the rebels.

However, much of what was covered has already been featured in other programmes like last week's edition of Russell Howard's Good News, including the house that looked like Hitler, the Michael Jackson statue and Wayne Rooney's swearing. While the move back to Friday will no doubt please many viewers it does mean that other satirical comedies get to the stories first, so in a way it feels like the jokes are being repeated. Then again, they do cover some stories with more depth than other shows, so they get points for that.

The main problem that I have with HIGNFY - and indeed most satirical comedy shows - is that very often the jokes are just too lazy. All they have to do is find a single oddity about a person and they will keep making the same jokes about that person forever, or until they find an even better oddity.

We saw the same jokes tottered out again: Russell Brand and Silvio Berlusconi are lecherous; Sarah Palin is stupid yet sexually appealing; Eric Pickles is fat and so on. I loathe this lazy writing, especially the fat gags. For around 15 years we have had to listen to the same old jokes about John Prescott being fat and grumpy, and now that he has gone we're going to have to listen to the same gags again, but now with a different target.

Of course the thing you have to remember is that now we have a Tory government in power, so satire should be easier anyway. I have my own personal theory about satire, which is that there is always a satire boom in comedy whenever a right-wing government is in power.

In the 1940s, Charlie Chaplin made The Great Dictator, probably his greatest film. In the early 1960s you had the satire boom under Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home with shows like Beyond the Fringe and That Was The Week That Was, which soon fell after Harold Wilson came to power in the late 1960s. In the 1980s you had the alternative comedy boom and Spitting Image. In the 1990s Drop the Dead Donkey and HIGNFY began during Thatcher's final days, with Spitting Image finishing the year before Blair came to power and DDTD finishing the year after. In the 2000s, America had shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report under George W. Bush. The only problem is that no-one was expecting the Lib Dems to come into play.

Still, HIGNFY is enjoyable. It's not going to bring down the government. Mind you, with the Conservatives in power, would they want all that good material going to waste?

If you've not seen Burnistoun don't worry - most people haven't, primarily because it's only broadcast on BBC Scotland and thus if you live anywhere else in the UK you have to watch it on iPlayer.

It's a shame, really, because Burnistoun is a very good show. To give you a quick summary of what it's about, the show features a range of different characters played by Robert Florence and Iain Connell in the fictional town of Burnistoun. The most famous characters are Paul and Walter, the owners of the town's ice cream van who always share a moment of high tension.

This week, idiotic Walter got petrified from watching a horror film which turned out to be Jools Holland's TV show, had to deal with a women who wanted to buy tampons and Paul tried to break up Walter's relationship with his best friend - a Breville sandwich toaster. The sketch was just bonkers but utterly brilliant. Bizarre ideas kept building on top of the other until the point that all you can do is drive your van away.

The best way to describe this show is simply 'daft'. Sketches featuring two Kenny Rodgers impersonators falling in love, a rap about shoes being left on top of bus stops, and a trailer for a horror film about a terrifying wee wardrobe are amongst some of the oddities that are on offer.

As said before, it seems baffling that such a show is not being shown nationwide, because it clearly is a hit over the border. For me, it's rather like one of those situations where they try out a TV show on a digital station before moving it over to a terrestrial channel. If it's successful, then it'll no doubt be given more public exposure. I say that, but it already is successful really, so if the BBC wouldn't mind sticking it on in England now I think we'd all be glad.

This week's edition of Good News had something for everyone. If you like Russell Howard, you will no doubt find this particular episode up to his usual standard. If you don't like Howard you'll get the joy of seeing him being beaten up by an old lady: if only more pensioners practiced martial arts then the world would be a happier place.

The thing with this series is that it's not the most satirical show in the world. It touches on some big topics covered in the news, but it's always in a light-hearted manner. Most of the time it's trivial human interest stories which he mocks, including clips from online and around the world.

Indeed there is quite a lot of garbage out there which is ripe for mocking, from newspaper stories devoted to a house that looks like Adolf Hitler to the TV coverage given to a man who showers with a squirrel.

Interestingly, quite a bit of this week's edition was disturbing and a little frightening. The budget lady-boy airline sketch might have mentally scarred many, as would have the excerpt from Rebecca Black's 'Friday' (I've been trying my hardest not to listen to that stupid song. To be honest, I put it on mute rather than listen to it in case it really is as horrible as people claim it to be.)

The best thing about Good News, though, is fittingly the good news story at the end, in this case about an Indian cook who gave up his job to feed the homeless. It really is good to see some news is treated with the respect and airtime it should be given, and Howard really does capture that well.

And it's certainly arguable that the laid-back and fun approach of Russell Howard's Good News is one of the best forms of satire, along with the harder hitting, informed, Mark Thomas style of satirical comedy and activism. That's possibly why 10 O'Clock Live does nothing for me. It just sits in the middle - trying to be hard-hitting but failing to do so - and loses viewers because of it.

Sex and the Sitcom looked at the history of the sexual revolution through the lens of British sitcoms. The history is really rather tragic.

Because the most successful British characters in sitcoms are failures - like Hancock, Mainwaring, Steptoe, Fawlty and so on - you knew that there was no way that they were going to find someone to love, and those characters who were married never had it off.

Amongst the pieces of information was how 'the pill' revolutionised sitcoms. Before the invention of the pill, sitcoms were male dominated, but post-pill women had more freedom, and therefore could have more time on screen. It's a bit of a loose analysis but still interesting. Also mentioned was that during the 1970s ITV was more adventurous in covering sex and the permissive society than the BBC, with programmes like On the Buses being much more rowdy. To quote David Quantick (who was featured on the documentary), you could only have sex on ITV, 'If you had chips.'

In terms of the 1990s, perhaps the most annoying thing was the fact that the Americans were much better at covering sex in sitcoms than the British, with things such as "The Contest" episode of Seinfeld - probably the greatest single episode in American sitcom history - being shown, while in the UK one of the most complained about sitcom episodes was Christmas special of Men Behaving Badly when Caroline Quentin gets a tissue stuck to her face.

In conclusion, the series claimed that the biggest enemy against sex in sitcom is the jokes are simply not funny enough, which may explain why neither Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps nor Coming of Age were mentioned in the programme.

This mockumentary is now half-way through its run, so we can now get a good idea of what it's truly like. My overall conclusion is thus - it's good, but not great.

There's a big problem with any mockumentary which can be summed up in two words: The Office. As soon as any new series comes up it's almost naturally compared with it, and because The Office was so prolific any similar show is cast in its shadow. People instantly say it is not original. In the case of Twenty Twelve, it's not just critics saying it, but the Australians claiming it's copying their sitcom The Games.

There are some problems with the show anyway, though. Just little things, but (for example) how come one of the main characters was not included in last week's episode? Some of the jokes are rather unsurprising, too, especially during the Ian Fletcher routine which felt so, so predictable.

There were some high points however. The highlight of last night's episode was Amelia Bullmore trying desperately to do a video blog which she kept messing up - though that's probably because, as a former media student, I know what it's like. I constantly kept fluffing my lines like Bullmore did, so I know that things like this do happen. It all ties into that fear of public speaking that most of us have, and it's a really clever observational piece.

Sadly, I have not read any of Thackeray's work, so I am unable to comment on the faithfulness of the adaptation. What I can say however is that the programme was enjoyable. It was an entertaining and amusing work, although not necessarily something that will make you laugh out loud.

Mind you, it is to be expected. It is a period piece that is also satirical. If satirical jokes go out of date over the course of a few days or weeks, not many people will understand the references made in work published in 1837. However, that is not to say that this show should be avoided. It is a pleasurable listen.