Jack Seale

Why I Love...The Trip

Yes, it's self-indulgent. The Trip is a misshapen, semi-improvised series in which two comics, playing themselves, tour the North's most expensive rural restaurants... But only the great Larry Sanders Show can compete with The Trip's dissection of its stars' vanity and inadequacy. The Trip is as funny as hell.

Steve Coogan is currently showcasing his inner pain to great comic/dramatic effect in BBC2's The Trip, playing himself. In the first of this double bill of one-act plays he does the same as a Russian character created 125 years ago: a man who's supposed to be lecturing on The Dangers of Tobacco but is so consumed with animosity towards his mean and controlling wife, he talks only of her. The script unravels the speaker skilfully (he's good, Chekhov) but to come alive it needs a performer who can put all his bruised heart into it: Coogan makes the crescendo of bitterness and disappointment scarily real. The Proposal, a fast, talky farce, approaches the same theme from another angle, and has another bravura performance: Mathew Horne as a nervous suitor asking for the hand of his neighbour, Sheridan Smith. They're long-term friends, but the years have caused a build-up of tiny resentments more suited to a marriage.

The surprise sitcom hit of 2009 returns for that all-important second series. These are family-friendly, retro japes that will put a big silly grin on your face, providing you buy into Miranda Hart's goofy comic persona. If you don't buy into it, the way she constantly breaks the fourth wall and mugs to camera will make your mind itch, and you'll have to switch off. For us fans, Miranda and chums are a fun gang that we feel a part of - and, while it's funny when she gets stuck in a chair or trips over a hatstand, the scripts are much sharper and more heartfelt than they initially appear. Tonight, Miranda vows to get fit and lose weight.

Another Sky Arts project that will have them scuffing their Hush Puppies with envy over at BBC4: a series of Anton Chekhov's one-act comic plays, revived to celebrate his 150th birthday and featuring some of Britain's best comedy actors.

Tonight it's A Reluctant Tragic Hero, starring Johnny Vegas in overdrive as the put-upon Tolkachov, a man given so many errands to run by his wife and friends that he's come to borrow a gun from his friend Murashkin (Mackenzie Crook).

Nothing gets in the way of Vegas's boiling monologues: with a one-room set, painted backdrop, bright lighting, straightforward translation and no music, it's like a 1970s production and all the better for it.

The pop quiz is back for its second series without Simon Amstell - it coped just fine last year. On Phill Jupitus's team tonight: syntax-mangling Strictly judge Alesha Dixon, and Mollie King of the Saturdays - a girlband so nondescript, Mollie could appear in the line-up round. With Noel Fielding, it's rapper Tinie Tempah and comic Paul Foot. Even the guest host has something to promote: it's Mark Ronson, who has a new album out. But if he's still got the bleached hairdo he sported on Later, that's one laugh in the bag already.

It's a queer cove of a show, this. The action never staggers far from the hovel of hash 'n' weed seller Moz (Johnny Vegas), so there's no variation of location - and often, his stoner customers simply take turns to arrive, act funny for a bit and leave, so there's not much story to grab onto. Losing your concentration would be forgivable and, perhaps, appropriate. But the eclectic supporting cast are worth staying awake for. This episode offers a hilarious pop duo - berks in leotards and Phil Oakey hairdos - and Sean Lock, who straps on his breasts again as dour transsexual Natalie. Most excitingly, Moz's new neighbour is played by Janeane Garofalo, once a star of The Larry Sanders Show.

Reading aloud for a few seconds every half-hour might seem like a cushy job - but this new sitcom by Hugh Rycroft imagines a world of pain behind the sturdy vowels of a Radio 4 continuity announcer. Alistair McGowan plays the announcer who leads a lonely professional life in the booth, away from his wife and kids, mulling things over between stints at the mic.

After one series of sitcommy larks last year, frantic trio We Are Klang are back with a pilot for a new format, which suggests they've been told to rethink. It's worked - this is funnier. On a cardboard set, with a script that's equally ramshackle, they play various characters, almost all of whom end up being hit, dry-humped or covered in food. At the centre is Greg Davies, an enormous, prancing man constantly suppressing a giggle, which will be annoying if you're not laughing too. But the Klang have a knack for bludgeoning apparently hopeless material, eg an item about hoodies attacking ill-looking people with vegetables, into working. Meanwhile, a sketch with Davies as a mad female faith healer could be a Shooting Stars offcut, and the running gag spoofing a Noel Edmonds NTV prank is a peach.

Pour yourself a cider and squirt some silly string - BBC3 has a sitcom aimed at young adults that isn't grindingly awful! John Warburton, graduate of the BBC's College of Comedy, writes about a bad pub and its crazy regulars in similar style to Two Pints... and Coming of Age, with the twist that a lot of his gags work, so you don't feel actively insulted. Inn Mates is a bit too reliant on sex, booze and easily anticipated set-ups, but there are enough naughtily imaginative visual gags to warrant a series. I enjoyed the dweeby police officers who, on a weekend off, misunderstand what "disco biscuits" are.

A three-parter promising "lovely views, stolen kisses, packed lunches and punch-ups": each episode shows us one day trip taken by a group of squabbling ramblers. It should be fertile comedy ground, and the cast is superb: Lark Rise to Candleford's master of elongated suffering, Mark Heap, stars as group leader Bob, with Gavin & Stacey's Ruth Jones playing Christine, a new member just arrived from Barnstaple. If that weren't upsetting enough, she's got a GPS and fancy hiking socks...