Jack Dee

Saturday night... The Marriage Ref. Last of the sizzling series. A landmark in television history. Will it come back? No.

But another rare chance to catch ubiquitous guest Sarah Millican and her dreaded Geordie wit. Which used to be quite funny... until she started appearing on every show in town.

"I can't believe you got divorced," gasped witless host Dermot O'Leary. I can. And I'm guessing Sarah's husband saw far too much of her. Like the rest of us.

Similarly over-exposed panel game favourite Micky Flanagan sighed: "I don't know why I'm here." Because Jimmy Carr and Jack Dee weren't around... and it was your turn on the rota. Same old faces... same old jokes.

As always, the ­contestants all loved each other deeply. But had some meaningless minor moan.

A dead show walking right from the start, this pointless pap was so ­stunningly dull it was shunted to a late night timeslot. Due to total lack of interest.

It's Friday night, the pubs have closed and you need some diversion. Nothing too taxing, mind, just a familiar treat, like a bunch of old comedy clips. And here's a cunning way to recycle classic routines and sketches: you intersperse the clips with modern comedians explaining how good they were. So Jack Dee tells us how Billy Connolly's debut on the Parkinson show in 1975 was an inspiration, not least for the tasteless joke Connolly told. The programme slightly ruins the joke by revealing the punchline at the start; and you wish it wouldn't keep cutting into Eddie Izzard's inspired 'learning French' routine so that Rhod Gilbert can enthuse. Yes, we know it's good! So let us watch it!

A welcome new addition to the Friday night schedules - some real comedy in among the chat shows masquerading as such. Pitched at the post-pub crowd it's an archive show in which some of today's comics celebrate the great TV moments that inspired them to pursue a career in stand-up, or simply left them doubled over helpless with laughter and admiration.

Jack Dee is up first, recalling the impact that Billy Connolly's debut appearance on Parkinson - when the Big Yin told the infamous bum joke that turned him into a comedy superstar overnight - had on his teenage self back in 1975. Among those piling in to concur, and recall what an enormous influence Connolly was, are Jon Culshaw, Dara O'Briain, Alan Carr and Jo Brand. Then, before it all gets too indulgent, Brand recalls her own favourite - a groundbreaking 1988 sketch from French and Saunders in which the duo play dirty old men watching a beauty pageant. Again, there's praise from the likes of Alan Carr, Joan Rivers, Andi Osho and - a touch bizarrely - Paddy McGuinness, before moving on to the next (Rhod Gilbert on Eddie Izzard's surreal "learning French" routine), and finishing with hymns to Max Miller and Les Dawson. In truth, the old doesn't always mix with the new, and the insights aren't always scintillating, but it's a chance to enjoy again some hilarious moments, and to discover some past flights of genius that may have passed you by.

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.