Jack Seale

With David Renwick's planned ITV sitcom frustratingly canned due to a creative dispute with channel bosses, Creek is the only outlet for one of the masters of TV comedy writing. The long-awaited Easter special saw Alan Davies and Sheridan Smith return, supported by Joanna Lumley, Rik Mayall and Nigel Planner, for a typically tricksy locked-room mystery.

That week on TV: Are You Having a Laugh?, BBC1

Ann Widdecombe's polemic on jokes about Christianity going too far was unexpectedly instructive.

Silly ideas other sketch shows wouldn't consider, written and performed with care and expertise other sketch shows cannot match: that's this series in a nutshell.

Tonight! A time traveller goes back to 1969 to kill Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice before they can finish Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. We ask Buzz Aldrin what Neil Armstrong really said when he stepped onto the Moon. Plus, the Amish Sex Pistols.

It's all great, with Kevin Eldon's bold decision to be at the centre of everything giving it an extra bit of authored uniqueness.

With the hype building for August's Alan Partridge film, it's time to catch this magisterial comeback from Norfolk's infamous broadcaster, if you missed it last year. Steve Coogan's alter ego fronts an hour-long documentary about his home town which owes a debt to portentous history shows and chummy celeb travelogues. It's as funny as Partridge ever was, but pushes in new directions.

The gimmick of this sitcom, which is ribald without being too dumb, is that it's set in ancient Rome but blatantly has 21sdt-century sensibilities. Tom Rosenthal (Friday Night Dinner) and Joel Fry (who superbly played dimwits in Twenty Twelve and Trollied) are Marcus and Stylax, two losers with dead-end administrative jobs and a chronic lack of fmale attention. With rubbish slave Grumio (Ryan Sampson) taking the place of a feckless pal, they could be from any modern comedy, but transferring the tropes to a period setting gives this one another layer.

Radio Times review

"At least it's made by somebody who cares," said up-and-coming 52-year-old sketch comedian Kevin Eldon at the start of his first solo series, just after a giant boxing glove had appeared in shot to punch him in the face. This was the joy of It's Kevin: silly set-ups other sketch shows wouldn't consider, executed with a level of care and expertise other sketch shows can't match.

Eldon has appeared in Brass Eye, I'm Alan Partridge, Fist of Fun, Harry & Paul, Nighty Night and countless other revered British comedies, its creators all knowing that his impeccable timing and oddball menace would lift their projects. Big names like Julia Davis have reciprocated by guesting in It's Kevin, but they're not just doing Eldon a favour, and this isn't just a chance for a technically gifted supporting actor to have a go at being the lead in a bunch of sketches. Eldon boldly put himself centre-screen as the host and creator of a programme that lovingly, caringly turned the sketch show inside-out. His writing is as impressive as his acting.

It began with a song-and-dance number in a bright white studio, with ticker tape, Cockney walkabouts, puppets and a thrash-punk interlude. If it had stopped there it would still have been the comedy of the year so far, but on it went, often staying in the white studio with sketches sidling in and out of Eldon's interactions with a cast of helpers. His maintenance man couldn't find the lost property office. His wardrobe assistant spoke only in screams (taken, I think, from that "goats shout like humans" YouTube video). The perfect sandwich was made by Hosni Mubarak, a curt young man with a massive dagger. A man played by David Cann explained that the best sandwich he ever had was one a found under a train seat. "I don't know what was in it. Orangey, yellow sticky stuff."

There hasn't been a sketch show with ideas this good since Big Train in 1998 - Eldon was in that as well. He reprised his famous impression of George Martin, giving the Beatles producer's voice to Hitler reminiscing about annexing the Sudetenland ("I immediately knew that we were onto something big"). But the biggest laughs were stupid visual jokes, superbly performed. The bit where Eldon failed to replace a microphone back in the stand went on for an extremely long time, but I could have watched it for longer.

The scheduling at 10.30pm on a Sunday, and the lack of on-air promotion and advance marketing, suggest BBC2 thought they had a weird dud on their hands, until scores of comedy pros shouted about It's Kevin on social media, and every broadsheet ran a profile detailing Eldon's impeccable pedigree. Then there was the odd flicker of support from the BBC online, too late: only 430,000 people tuned in according to overnight figures.

Those ratings are on a par with Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle - so it was that another original comedy by a rare talent pouring his heart into his career peak was seen only by the niche audience who were already on side. If people who aren't comedy nerds miss It's Kevin, they have really missed out.

A joyous fresh and imaginative take on the sketch format from one of the nation's finest comic performers. Kevin Eldon's appearances in countless cult comedies have left him with a useful contact book, but the myriad star guests aren't simply doing this up-and-coming 52-year-old a favour in his first solo series: the writing is as maniacally funny as Eldon's acting. The scheduling (late on Sunday) suggests BBC2 don't know what a gem they've got here.

A downbeat sitcom that plays out like a low-key indie film: the talented Terry Mynott is the gloriously named Martin Hurdle, an extremely lowly site maintenance worker at a pharmaceuticals firm who has very few friends or prospects, and a talent for celebrity impressions that forms his mental escape route. He may also have a long-lost son. Mynott was in The Morgana Show and VIP, where he worked with The Mimic writer Matt Morgan - but where those shows were brash and crass, this is the opposite.

Jessica Hynes rocks RTS Awards with outrageous speech

Twenty Twelve actor has room full of TV stars in hysterics with epic, sweary speech mocking Jack Whitehall.

Radio Times review

When I saw the premise for Channel 4's new comedy The Mimic, I was furious. It might banjax my long-nurtured plan to write a sitcom for Alistair McGowan, in which he plays a TV impressionist whose personal life is a disaster because of his inability to converse as himself. Scene one: Alistair resolutely embarks on his sixth marriage, but recites the vows in the voices of Peter Snow, Jim Bowen, and Orville. Later, the wedding night is ruined when Alistair does Dot Cotton in his new wife's ear.

Anyway, as it turns out The Mimic is sort of the opposite of that. Terry Mynott is the fabulously named Martin Hurdle, a gentle loser who has only one friend, a dowdy trouper called Jean (Jo Hartley), and no future prospects in his work maintaining the grounds of a faceless pharmaceutical firm. His secret, and his mental release valve, is that he's a brilliant impressionist.

The Mimic is by Russell Brand's old sidekick Matt Morgan, who worked with Mynott on The Morgana Show and VIP. Where they were crass and brash, this is slow, quiet and lovely. It has the vibe of an indie film, possibly one starring a big comedy name gambling their fame to prove they're human and can act.

Mynott has no fame to risk, yet there's still bravery in the way he makes Martin so uninhibitedly genuine and sad. In the first episode he was often filmed to accentuate his isolation. His little triumphs mostly weren't witnessed by anyone. He stopped doing his spot-on Alan Carr in the company car park when people walked into earshot, and his fantastic imagined conversation between Morgan Freeman and James Earl Jones faltered when Jean asked who he was talking to and told him to get some sleep.

The Mimic[c/] is a bit more than a sitcom. You wonder not only whether it will still be funny next week and the week after, but also where it will go - what will happen to the hero. Is he a talented man waiting to be discovered or just a lonely man waiting to be loved?

Scenes where Martin met his previously unknown 18-year-old son, and where he took revenge on a bad HR manager by being him on the office tannoy, hinted that his achingly small world is about to expand. We'll be rooting for him to survive the change.