Jack Seale

Radio Times review

Arbiter Maven's official duties are banal - as this peach of an episode opens, he's judging a contest to find Jinsy's best bucket with a face drawn on - but at least they're not usually dangerous. So when a fortune-teller predicts he'll be assassinated during a sunset duck-impersonation ritual, he takes action.

He can't skive it, since if he doesn't appear, tradition dictates he be relieved of his duties and replaced by a duck. So he finds a doppelganger, who unfortunately turns out to be a fairground lag who behaves like a cross between Old Man Steptoe and Sid Vicious. A My Fair Lady parody ensues, with Cronenbergian overtones and a superb double performance from Justin Chubb.

In the Moosic Tavern, elderly duo Retch & Hoik make a welcome return to the stage. Their composition Deborah is the sort of song the Undertones would have written if they'd been around in the 1920s and had known a transvestite plumber.

Justin Chubb and Chris Bran interview

As series two begins, we talk to the men whose strange little creation attracts guest performances from the likes of Stephen Fry, Olivia Colman and Derek Jacobi.

One of the few festive programmes where the people on screen are normally drunker than the viewers. Jimmy Carr again presides over a panel game that usually attracts a good deal of correspondence from people who like to be offended at Christmas.

The passing of legislation earlier this year forcing Jack Whitehall to be included in all comedy programmes on all channels was controversial, but - perhaps due to some sort of hangover from his competitive days as a public schoolboy - he's well suited to the quiz format.

Whitehall and fellow bellower Jonathan Ross have gentler comic minds to offset them, answering questions about the past 12 months of news: Kristen Schaal is this year's woman, and there's also Richard Ayoade, who's effortlessly defused this gnarly bearpit in past Big Fat Quizzes. Plus, Noel Fielding and Dara O'Briain.

Radio Times review

You know how Yonderland keeps inventing great one-off characters you wish you could see again? In the series finale, you can!

When inadequate overlord Negatus kidnaps Elf, the elf, it's time for housewife and alternate-realm messiah Debbie to put together a raggle-taggle gang of chancers and get her friend back. The pathologically polite swordsmen, the monks who learnt to lie and became estate agents, and the magician with anger issues all join Debbie on another trek through the enchanted forest.

As always, it's knowing without being too spoofy, and laden with gags without sacrificing the story. This is one of the comedies of the year - bet all your doubloons on it returning in 2014.

Dave Berry on Through the Keyhole

The Through the Keyhole panellist and Capital FM breakfast host takes us through his festive TV plans.

Radio Times review

This utterly superb family comedy reaches an episode that's a favourite of the Yonderland team. You can see why. Debbie happens upon the Ninnies, who are another example of how the show takes simple ideas and makes them fresh. The Ninnies are a spectacularly stupid people, whose wheels are square, whose front steps don't lead to the front door, and whose sackcloth outfits really should have pants underneath. Debbie has to gently talk them out of a really stupid custom that's arresting their evolution.

Meanwhile, the evil but inept Negatus has been buying cheap sapphire ore from the Ninnies, who don't know what they're selling. The man he foolishly hires to refine it, a Teutonic glam-rock pervert played with immense relish by Laurence Rickard, is the episode's hidden delight.

Radio Times review

Heydon Prowse and Jolyon Rubinstein bow out with a last clutch of stunts, many of them harder-edged than before. Fake right-wing hack Dale Maily romps around the Notting Hill Carnival, in a segment that initially appears to be a rather uncomfortable experiment to see how people respond to a racist. But the magic of the event soon gets hold of him.

Backbenchers James and Barnaby take their abusive coalition relationship to a teachers' union protest, before going a step further by somehow being allowed to address a closed meeting. One scene will draw complaints, but it makes a basic point well: in Kensington, the Israeli embassy is expanding, which is bad news for the local shops that will have to be bulldozed.

Radio Times review

One of the many strengths of this show is the guarantee that there'll be an entirely new, entirely brilliant comic character to enjoy in every episode, in addition to the magic kingdom's regulars. The other week the team even had the nerve to create tremendous womaniser Philip of Woolworth, then kill him off after only one hilarious scene.

Tonight there's another lothario, who lasts a bit longer as he attempts to woo Debbie (Martha Howe-Douglas): King Bernard (Jim Howick) joins her on her latest quest, but he's more interested in his planned statue of himself. The blowsy love ballad Bernard sings to try to make Debbie his queen is terrific, as is Laurence Rickard's episode-stealing turn as Chamberlain, Bernard's disgusted manservant who has long since resorted to burning sarcasm.

Yonderland does preening, benign fools as well as any comedy. But now Debbie also, finally, meets the realm's less benign fool: Negatus.

The usual stunts - putting up insulting signs and delivering insulting props at corporate or political HQs - are above average this week, with a highlight being the brightly coloured donation boxes installed in the main parties' offices, so businessmen can leave money in exchange for a peerage. There's also an excellent re-edit of Ed Miliband's conference speech, turning into the dullest cover version of One Vision by Queen ever.

But increasingly the stars of this show are James and Barnaby, the low-ranking coalition goons played by pranksters Jolyon Rubinstein and Heydon Prowse. This week they tackle Scottish independence, discussing the issue with kilted football fans approaching an England v Scotland match. Can they survive?

Radio Times review

Sometimes this show feels rather like an endless list of depressing facts about a corrupt world, with the bad guys too numerous and malign to be dented by light pranking. With the best ideas naturally blown in the first few episodes, tonight there are quite a few will-this-do stunts, such as plastering a tax-avoidance slogan on Cadbury's HQ, then running away.

As always, Revolution is best when Jolyon Rubinstein and Heydon Prowse interact at length with unwitting stooges, preferably in ridiculous circumstances. Their attempt to launch a privatised lifeguard service on Brighton beach does not go down well. And we still need more of BBCOMGWTF, the apparently vapid red-carpet interview segment that suddenly asks questions like: "Is Tony Blair a war criminal?"