Jack Dee

Marriage Ref couldn't be saved by Jack Dee & Jimmy Carr

What an appalling concept the programme has at its core. Unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing compelling about this series.

Coming late into an already saturated market, Sky 1's Wall of Fame is a fitfully-amusing, chronically derivative and ambition-free comedy quiz show based around the previous week's top 32 most talked about celebrities.

David Walliams is in the chair, with Jack Dee and Kate Garraway as competing team captains. It is something of a cakewalk for Walliams and Dee, relaxed to the point of complacent, but since comedy is hardly Garraway's forte she is given Andrew Maxwell as a teammate. Maxwell's material is quite funny, but he really should put a more effort into feigning spontaneity. It all sounds suspiciously scripted to order.

The rest of the panelists usually comprise attractive but vacant young women, purportedly celebrities themselves, whose principal contribution is to make the men appear funnier by comparison.

Wall of Fame isn't bad, but neither is it particularly good either. With originality so low on its list of priorities the show already looks a bit tired, despite being brand new.

There is no better place to seek out a little light relief than I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, now incredibly in its 55th series. Doubtless many long term fans of the show who still pine for Humphrey Lyttelton as chair, but Jack Dee does a fine job, especially when he throws in a few dry asides.

In the first instalment of the new series, recorded at Nottingham's Royal Concert Hall, regulars Graeme Garden, Barry Cryer and Tim Brooke-Taylor were joined by relative newcomer Marcus Brigstocke, the latter managing to impress his cohorts with a classy move during a round of Mornington Cresent. With Colin Sell at the piano and Samantha on the scoreboard, the endless nonsense and wit was still laugh out loud funny, my favourite moment on this occasion being Summertime sung to the theme from Jim'll Fix It.

Six to watch: Stand-ups in sitcoms

As Jack Dee's Lead Balloon comes to a close, we cast out eye back over the funniest standup-fronted sitcoms.

The main problem I have with I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue as a reviewer is that it's impossible to review such a classic show, one which has been on the air for nearly 40 years. What can you say about it that hasn't been said already?

Well, let's start off with the guest panellist - first-timer Marcus Brigstocke. Out of the four panellists (the others being the three regulars, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden), he seemed to have the funniest bits. Maybe he was the funniest, maybe it's the show's view to make the guest look the funniest, I don't know. However, he did seem to have many high points in the episode I listened to - his rendition of "Common People" to the tune of "If You're Happy and Know It", for example, was great.

There was also the introduction of a new round in this show called "Heston's Services". This was akin to similar rounds such as "Book Club" and "Film Club", in this case coming up with meals that Heston Blumenthal would serve at a motorway service station.

The other main component of the show, of course, is host Jack Dee. I know that there are lot of people out there who won't accept him as host and won't be happy until Humphrey Lyttelton is exhumed, reanimated and blowing his trumpet in the chair for all eternity, but Dee does a good job as far as I'm concerned.

The concluding episode of the series, and at long last cynical comedian Rick Spleen (Jack Dee) has found fame. Following last week's hostage situation in which he was trapped in the prison library, Rick is fêted in the tabloids as the "prison siege comic". He's inundated with offers, including an invitation to star in a celebrity survival series. But Rick knows he's hit the big time when he's asked to host the Brave Britain Awards - a ceremony broadcast live on TV. Of course he accepts, and, of course, things don't quite go according to plan.

Not so much scene as scene-stealer of the week was undoubtedly Robbie Coltrane, single-handedly lifting Lead Balloon (BBC2), the rather smart yet unaccountably underrated Jack Dee thing, into a new stratosphere.

How much would you want to be held hostage in a prison library by heavy jailbird Coltrane, who only wanted to like you and viscerally psychoanalyse you? I can think of worse things, chief among them having to ever watch any more of that thing called The Marriage Ref on ITV on Saturdays, utter hound (the original, produced in the US by Jerry Seinfeld, was also an utter hound and, blissfully, allows me to say that I was smart for never understanding the niche of Seinfeld).

Jack Dee, the person, actually looked physically scared in front of Robbie Coltrane, the person. I can understand. I once gave Coltrane my favourite clutch-pencil because he expressed a faint interest in it. Dee's fabulously picaresque pizza order, done under similar scared-boy circumstances, sent, when eaten, Coltrane to sleep. Allowed Dee to escape for another episode: and, I would hope, another series.

Robbie Coltrane in Lead Balloon brilliance

Those lucky enough to reside within range of a BBC Two signal last night, hopefully, saw a brilliant episode from the new season of the genius British comedy series, Lead Balloon, starring Jack Dee. In an apples and oranges kind of scenario, this reminded me of last years "Rope" episode from Psychoville in that it was not only innovative television, but pushed the boundaries of an ongoing series from a creative standpoint to a level that showcases the creative genius of the series.

Even those of us who once loved this sitcom have had to admit that the fourth series has felt tired, leaning on a formula we know too well: Rick Spleen's lies and hypocrisy lead, via some gentle farce, to humiliation - a social embarrassment, a public shaming, a further slide down the ranks of washed-up celebs. Tonight, though, is very different. Last week's episode, where Rick took his comedy class to Belford Prison, ended in a moment of real jeopardy: a prisoner took Rick hostage with a razor blade. The inmate was played by Robbie Coltrane and tonight he and Jack Dee share a two-hander that is radically different from your average Lead Balloon, and all the better for it. It's not bursting with belly laughs, but Coltrane is superb as the touchy drug dealer desperate for a chess set. And the light he casts on Rick's hopeless inability to tell the truth is strangely satisfying.

I was a bit down (appropriately) on Lead Balloon when this final series started, and there hasn't been much since to make me change my mind. It's felt tired. Until this one, in which Rick is taken hostage by a dangerous criminal at Belford jail. It's just the two of them in the prison library for the whole half-hour. Well, one really: Jack Dee does a lot of his squirmy, crumpled-forehead thing but the episode belongs to Robbie Coltrane, who is excellent as Rick's volatile but sensitive captor. A cracker then, again appropriately.