Jack Seale

Series two of the workmanlike self-satire continues to walk through all the tropes that made mockumentaries cool 10 years ago. David Hasselhoff plays himself as a daringly plausible caricature, with his disastrous career marshalled by Thick of It spinners, who give Office-style interviews commentating on the action. Tonight, low earnings cause the Hoff to fake his own death. It's efficient, but every line is the most agonising thing comedy can be: nearly funny.

Only one day to go before the housemates' final exams, Josie announces through a rolled-up magazine while everyone else is trying to stress-masturbate. Only Howard and Oregon are revising, though, and even they're not ready for the enormity of moving to London to do a boring job. Time for a group heart-to-heart, which Vod helpfully organises by causing the gang to become locked in their own basement. It's the penultimate episode, but they're all still trapped, in more ways than one.

Aliens have landed. They look like us, but their hair is hallucinogenic when shaved off and smoked, and we're really racist towards them and make them live in a lawless walled ghetto. Got that? Great. On with a swaggering escapade about a border control officer (Michael Socha) and his alien admirer (Jim Howick) getting tangled up with a mercurial alien gangster (Michaela Coel). That tremendous trio of leads, plus some backflippy direction, make this a fun ride. We can worry about where it's going later.

The return of a wilfully stupid format, which asks comedians to relate tales of yore while plastered. Other performers then star in scenes reflecting exactly what the soused comic has said, lip-syncing to any dialogue. It's a way to make improvised comedy less reliable. Not much comes of Jack Whitehall and Michelle Keegan as Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth I, but Robin Hood and Maid Marian, played by Mathew Baynton and Emma Bunton to the blazingly profane imaginings of Tom Davis, is sensational.

A consciously old-fashioned comedy one-off, with Catherine Tate and Miles Jupp as a couple whose stay in a honeymoon suite might save their marriage, if only ludicrous circumstance doesn't nobble them. There's quality throughout the cast, with Steve Edge and Car Share's Sian Gibson as the hotel staff, but farce is hard to write and this script falls well short. The pace doesn't gather, nothing anyone does is plausible, and the dialogue is littered with dead lines. Cringeworthy, in the wrong way.

Radio Times review

Plenty of opportunity for Jonathan Ross to joke about his own lazy foppishness: the testosterone will be flowing as Sylvester Stallone and Michael B Jordan, stars of the seventh Rocky movie Creed, hit the sofa. Expect a crunchy anecdote, possibly with alarming on-set footage, about how Jordan maintained Stallone's tradition of being beaten senseless for real in a scene where his character struggles through a boxing bout.

Ross also welcomes a big name who rarely chats. The imminent cinema release of tender, reflective comedy drama Youth has tempted Michael Caine out of talk-show retirement.

Radio Times review

Two startling moments arrive in rapid succession this week. The first is Arsenal legend and football pundit Ian Wright launching what's more or less a feminist critique of Grease: as the father of daughters, he disapproves of the hoops the female characters have to jump through, and indeed the trousers they have to squeeze into, to be deemed worthy of the males. In the consequent badinage, host Frank Skinner claims not to be able to sing "Hopelessly Devoted" to You without bawling. He's willing to demonstrate.

Hard pushed to compete with this are Joanna Scanlan, who accurately details the top no-nos when sharing a butter knife, and spider-hater Noel Fielding.

Radio Times review

"In part two of this revealing but convoluted documentary," says narrator Rhys Thomas, our man Brian (Simon Day) enters the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This prompts a retrospective. In the 1970s and 80s, Brian enjoyed mainstream success, pitched here somewhere between Peter Gabriel and Dire Straits; meanwhile, Thotch carried on without their departed talisman, regrouping as an outfit very similar to Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac.

This is the funniest Pern yet. Every line of Thomas and Day's script brings a laugh, and even the editing and archive shots are carefully loaded with absurdity. Scorching guest turns come from Christopher Eccleston as the producer of Brian's awful Madchester LP, and Jane Asher as an apoplectic ex-wife.

Ullman's enduring status is evident in her comeback show, with Samantha Spiro, Tony Gardner and Rupert Grint turning out as foils. The credits confirm the former 80s star of Three of a Kind also has the best writing and production team available. But this is not so much hit-and-miss as not-aiming-at-anything-concrete in the first place. Recurring characters, mimicry and light satire all refuse to ignite in a show that doesn't look as if its creator desperately needed to create it.

Radio Times review

Radio Times Top 40 TV Shows of 2015, #34:

What a comeback! Fears that Peter Kay would never return to equal Phoenix Nights were dismissed when his long-awaited, single-scene sitcom about two carpooling colleagues surprised everyone not just with how funny it was, but how affecting. Kay and the tremendous Sian Gibson sketched out a pair of apparently very different strangers who, the instant they were forced to know each other, discovered common ground and were good-hearted enough to run with it. Noticing them fall in love before they realised it themselves was one of the year's most cheering spectacles.