Jack Seale

Radio Times review

Gentler gags this week - albeit with a couple that are more adult than usual - so time perhaps to enjoy Martha Howe-Douglas's superb performance as Debbie, the increasingly reluctant hero whose status as The Chosen One is making her spend too much time in her magic cupboard and not enough with her family.

Howe-Douglas largely has to stand there and react as puppets and men in wigs make jokes around and about her, which in less charismatic hands could be a monotonous straight role. That it isn't is what holds the show together, especially this week as Debbie decides to leave Yonderland, and Elf the elf sends her on one last quest.

Radio Times review

Sports day! As Debbie's kids prepare to run their little races at school, she's going to be late because, in another world, it's time for Ye Grand Tournament. Every year the good guys stop rubbish villain Negatus snatching the cup, but now Debbie has to train a new contender. This uncovers the political fissures in Yonderland: women can't vote, talking sticks are wholly marginalised and noblemen can demand that pages talc their undercarriages. Among the highlights of another constantly funny episode are Ben Willbond's blond Aussie commentator, and a reptilian newspaper seller who flogs left- and right-wing news, using his actual wings.

OK, so this fantasy family comedy was superb last week, but opening episodes are sweated over for weeks to achieve perfection. Does Yonderland have enough ideas to keep a series going? Based on this new instalment, the bad news for jealous rivals is yes, it does.

Debbie (Martha Howe-Douglas) happens on a monastery that has been smashed by ogres on the orders of pathetic overlord Negatus: the survivors are on the run but their order worships truth, so to stop them turning themselves in Debbie must teach them to lie. This simple premise is mined for every gag going, with lovely throwaway jokes all over the place. There's a smile in every scene. Someone's sweated over this for weeks as well.

The Horrible Histories cast heads to the lushly appointed creative playground that is [y]Sky[/y], for a new comedy where their imagination is unencumbered by facts. Martha Howe-Douglas is the bewildered everywoman in a people-and-puppets fantasy that's loosely Monty Python's Life of Brian meets Labyrinth: a bored housewife steps through a portal in her larder and, reluctantly at first, embarks on a heroic quest in another realm. Here be talking sticks, foaming potions, squabbling elders and friendly giants who kill you by mistake.

Yonderland consistently takes the best of two worlds. It looks incredible but is more concerned with gags and plot; it has fun within the fantasy genre without resorting to snide spoof; and, crucially, it will make kids and adults laugh together, at the same jokes. If you don't have Sky, gather the family and descend on a household that does.

Class traitors Jolyon Rubinstein and Heydon Prowse return for a second series of pranks, stunts and hard stats about the sort of injustices that make Russell Brand's blood boil. Making merriment out of tax avoidance or PR firms that shill for tyrants isn't easy, but Rubinstein and Prowse have two ways to achieve it: flat-out silliness and a colossal amount of nerve. The series two opener sees Rubinstein combine both as he somehow accosts David Cameron at a fundraiser, demanding that he autograph his 1986 Bullingdon Club annual.

The final episode of Mat Baynton and James Corden's irresistible comedy thriller doesn't deliver what you hope it will. It goes much further than that. There's payoff after air-punching pay-off as the various threads of the story swiftly come together, with the sort of swagger you can't get away with unless you've been solidly entertaining for the previous five episodes.

But the increasingly heroic stooges Sam and Phil have been: chasing every red herring and unlikely plot twist just as we have, with their everyman meekness and uncertain friendship constantly threatening to spoil their efforts to do the right thing against the odds. As we rejoin the action, they merely have to escape from a circle of gun-toting special agents, before exposing a huge political conspiracy they can't prove exists. You wouldn't bet against them.

Mitchell and Webb on Ambassadors

We interview the stars of BBC Two's comedy drama. Why does Robert Webb struggle to visit France? And why did David Mitchell ignore Eamonn Holmes at an airport?

The high body count in this series, and the storyline's refusal to go back and rake over old ground, means there are great characters everywhere, barely known before being discarded at the side of the road. Following Nick Moran's small-time crook and Dougray Scott's surprisingly vulnerable spook, in this episode there's a bit more of Karel Roden excelling as Marat, the Russian gangster who is caught between his country's security services and ours.

Making him tender and childlike fits with the tone of a penultimate episode that's the most thrilling yet but also the most heartfelt, as we get to know Sam and Phil more deeply, just as they have to decide whether to risk everything to become heroes.

The laughs often come with a fist-pumping cheer not far behind: Mat Baynton's line at the end of a fantastic four-way punch-up with an FSB heavy could be a quotable highlight from an Edgar Wright movie.

Sitcoms usually reset to zero at the end of every episode, but this is not a sitcom. Every episode of The Wrong Mans sends our antsy heroes Sam and Phil several miles further away from normality. The danger is that the twisting storyline will strangle the comedy - and if this episode had an inch more plot, it'd have too much plot and not enough jokes. But it works because we're never too far from a big, silly visual gag or just a nice bit of interplay between creators Mat Baynton (Sam) and James Corden (the bolder but stupider Phil) - and beneath the pratfalling, the story has been carefully constructed.

Most of this episode takes place at an eastern European gangster's party, where Sam must dance for his life.

Radio Times review

James Corden's first narrative comedy since Gavin & Stacey does not disappoint, but is a quite different beast. Although Corden's character, office mailroom man Phil, could be Smithy's more optimistic cousin, this is no straight sitcom. It's a lavishly filmed and surprisingly gripping comic thriller about two meek losers caught in a kidnapping caper.

Corden is not the lead: his co-writer Mathew Baynton proves to be at home driving the action as Sam, a milksop who answers a phone at the scene of a car crash and becomes an unwilling hero. Think The Bourne Identity, remade by the Coen brothers, starring a hipster Frank Spencer.

Baynton and Corden's refusal to resort to spoof means the characters are likeable, the jokes are properly funny and the action is convincing. You'll want to know what happens next.