Jack Seale

In a cry for help about the show's lack of resources, the last episode is a clippy summary of this series and the previous. It's always a frustrating watch. Bloated, tawdry TV news urgently needs criticising, nobody else is doing it, and if Brooker's dismantling of reporting cliches can attract a million YouTube hits (see it at bit.ly/cr8dCm), he must be striking a chord. But he too often does that by stating the obvious, shying away from anything too politically challenging and rehashing observations The Day Today made 16 years ago. It's cathartic but, in the end, conservative.

Nobody watches BBC3 comedy pilots with total confidence, and with no preview DVD available, we haven't watched this one at all. But it has pedigree. Rhys Thomas, the straight-man star of Bellamy's People, writes and stars in a studio sitcom about police community support officers who want to be real cops, and who constantly derail investigations they shouldn't even be involved in. Years ago, Thomas had a minor cult hit with Fun at the Funeral Parlour - this sounds broader and more accessible. Look out for Denis Lawson as the chief constable.

Radio Times review of Limmy's Show

Holding up a mirror to our childish, base urges - and doing it in a fierce Glasgow accent - make Limond a bit much for the regular Beeb, even if there's well-constructed comedy and gentle humanity underneath all the bile and paranoia. So Limmy's Show is BBC2 Scotland only, but you can catch the whole series on iPlayer.

The Best Sitcoms Of 2009

It doesn't matter how many times I read that the sitcom is dead - I still watch every single one that comes on the telly, because my love for the medium is infinite.

Dave's top original show - recently selected for the honour of a rerun on BBC2 - finishes off the series with a best-of compo. So it's a bit funnier, although it still has the problem of mixing autocued speeches that feel too scripted with improvised banter that feels rudderless and underpowered. Sean Lock and Frankie Boyle are the pick of the many guest debaters. They join regular captains Rufus Hound, who strips naked at the end, and Marcus Brigstocke, who doesn't. Cuddly chairman John Sergeant links the clips.

Series two of the show that's like a comedy quiz as seen in a cheese dream. On a blinding set dominated by a glaring, lo-fi computer screen, two celebrity contestants are faced with questions that have been sent to text-message answer services. Tonight: Martin Offiah v Jenni Murray. The random goofing is indebted to Shooting Stars and can feel indulgent and exclusive, although you can't argue with the hilarity of Murray being made to shout "Both my parents are Nigerians!" into a decibel-meter. Tilting his head strangely backwards, Mark Watson hosts.

Thirty years after the release of the heretical masterpiece Monty Python's Life of Brian - and a few weeks since RT readers voted it the best comedy film ever - Sanjeev Bhaskar investigates how and why the Pythons did it. The movie was conceived when Eric Idle announced, for a laugh, that the follow-up to Monty Python and the Holy Grail would be called Jesus Christ - Lust for Glory. That throwaway gag ended up as a heartfelt, intelligent, rationalist satire where every scene is a quotable moment. As Terry Jones, Carol Cleveland, producer John Goldstone and others reminisce, it's a chance for fans to celebrate - and for those who dismiss the film as blasphemy to discover what it's really about.

One simple creative decision makes this infectious comedy sing: having Miranda Hart break the fourth wall and address us directly. Allowing her warmly manic alter ego to glance, mug and chat to camera makes us feel in on the joke. Few comedy performers have enough innate charm to carry such a performance off, but Hart does. Tonight, another unapologetically creaky story sees Miranda go on holiday to a hotel just round the corner.

Simon Amstell made this pop-music panel game outrageously, unmissably funny - but he also made it his own. It was Amstell doing a comedy act, with a quiz interrupting on occasion. Now he's made the logical decision to concentrate on his own stand-up, where he won't have to weave his jokes around asking someone from GMTV questions about Climie Fisher. So Buzzcocks has been left to go down the guest-host route. First to try to follow Amstell is James Corden, co-creator of both the untouchable Gavin & Stacey and the relentlessly (and slightly unfairly) panned Horne & Corden. His appearances on panel shows so far have been more fun for him than for us, but he's naturally funny and he knows his music. Also new, but full-time, is team captain Noel Fielding of absurdist rock-star comedy duo Mighty Boosh. He should slot right in opposite Phill Jupitus, who's now in his 14th year of humming intros and picking has-beens out of line-ups.

This sketch show didn't attract much attention on its first run earlier this year, but is worth revisiting. Yes, it's frightfully Footlights-y and the quiet, deadpan delivery isn't new, but Tim Key, Stefan Golaszewski, Lloyd Woolf and Tom Basden take just enough risks to set themselves apart. There's a running longform sketch where they all live absurdly together in a caravan, while the highlight of each episode tends to be a wilfully random, spectacularly insulting animation about celebrities' private lives. From these mild surprises come laughs.