Jack Whitehall

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.

It's like student life. You're thrown together with random strangers. You make friends, laugh like idiots, do bucket bongs and bond during small-hours heart-to-hearts. Then you moan about the washing up, pair up, grow up and drift apart. This third season of Fresh Meat has felt a bit like this process - and not altogether in a good way. It's as if the writers are trying to keep the first-year fun going, rather than accepting that what once was brilliant has now run its course.

JP epitomises this tail-chasing confusion - he's no nearer to understanding himself and in danger of being left behind. Jack Whitehall's character remains the main reason for watching Fresh Meat however: his blend of idiocy, neediness and entitlement is still sporadically hilarious. But we've long since ceased to care about Josie and Kingsley's relationship, so the crisis point they reach in tonight's season finale doesn't pack much of an emotional punch.

Elsewhere, Vod and Oregon break up to make up and Howard and Candice edge closer to a change in relationship status. Can Fresh Meat sustain another series? The performances continue to partially mask the longueurs, but we hope they quit while they're just about ahead.

Opinion: Jack Whitehall & the big tour warm-up problem

There has been a bit of a kerfuffle over the announcement that Jack Whitehall is to play a big work-in-progress gig at the Hammersmith Apollo in February in the the run-up to his UK tour. I can't see what all the fuss is about. Tickets will only be £20 whereas when he comes to Wembley Arena in March tickets, including booking fee, will be £32.25.

With Jack Whitehall due to reprise his role as the toffish, self-deprecating teacher in a US pilot next year, Alfie Wickers is arguably one of the most successful characters in Brit comedy today. This seasonal outing of the sitcom is a triumph of awkwardness, as Alfie combines RoboCop and The Nutcracker for the school play. There's even a role for bully Frank, who shows his sensitive side. Meanwhile, headteacher Fraser tries to organise a Christmas miracle: a reunion between the hapless Mr Wickers and his estranged mother.

Jack Whitehall, fresh from retaining his crown as King of Comedy, takes a crack at that old favourite, the school nativity play, with the help of his Bad Education reprobates. A somewhat uneasy marriage of Robocop and The Nutcracker, teacher Alfie's ambitious production finds room for tolerance channelled through the medium of expressive dance, guest turns from Frances Barber as Alfie's mum and Howard from Fresh Meat (Greg McHugh) as a thespian tramp, and no shortage of near-the-knuckle humour. Not forgetting some clinches with no need of mistletoe to pack some heat.

With a glut of costumes, Christmas songs and festive trappings, the Bad Education Christmas special is far from an understated affair. Forced to put on a play by elf/headmaster Simon (Mat Horne), the reluctant but unfazed Alfie (Jack Whitehall) must use the questionable student talent at his disposal to stage a story which incorporates every major world religion.

Sensitivity and subtlety not being Alfie's fortes, the Robocop- Nutcracker hybrid that he creates isn't exactly traditional Christmas fare. Silly, fun and light-hearted, Bad Education is patchy and seldom cerebral, but it still makes for an entertaining half-hour. Filled with puns, cultural references, extravagant dance routines and displaying a distinct lack of either taste or tact, it's a gaudy smorgasbord of verbal and physical comedy. Even the most committed of scrooges may find this raises a smile.

It was a bit rich of Jonathan Ross to call C4 "f***ing idiots" for cutting Steve Coogan short at The British Comedy Awards.

You were the host, Jonathan. Perhaps if you'd kept a tighter rein on the earlier ramblings - yes you, Will Ferrell - poor old Coogan would not have suffered such a gross invasion of his publicity.

By all accounts Coogan gave a pretty funny speech. So I guess if C4 had left it in it would have looked totally out of place on this show. The night opened with Rossy admitting "It's hard to know what makes good comedy" and ended with us in no doubt as to what does not.

No wonder so many people complained when the BBC cut short a repeat of Mrs Brown's Boys to announce Mandela's death. We're so starved of laughs these days we must protect the few we have.

The rant by Johnny Vegas detailing everything that is wrong about British comedy should be nailed to the wall of every TV office. Failing that, just nail it to Jack Whitehall. His face gets everywhere these days.

Radio Times review

The ubiquitous Jack Whitehall wrote and stars in this school-based comedy, back for a badly behaved Christmas special. Fed up with the nativity, his hapless history teacher invents a new festive story, a cross between Robocop and Nutcracker: Robocracker.

Sitcom staple Sarah Solemani plays the altruistic art teacher, while Mathew Horne sports an elf costume as the immature headmaster fond of tragic puns ("Snow-k?" "Yes sir, yours-elf?") Look out for Greg McHugh, Whitehall's co-star in Fresh Meat, as an expletive-spewing tramp.

The Nutcracker is a delightful festive tale, but wouldn't it be better if it were more like Robocop? Mat Horne's deranged wordplay-loving headmaster certainly thinks so, and it's up to Jack Whitehall's bumbling educator Alfie Wickers to make his vision a reality.

While bonkers school play Robocracker is the focus of the Bad Education Christmas special, there's plenty more going on in the halls of Abbey Grove, as Mitchell (Charlie Wernham) attempts to get Alfie's estranged mother back from Spain for the holidays and Miss Gulliver (Sarah Solemani) encourages her class to volunteer at a soup kitchen, making way for a guest appearance by Whitehall's Fresh Meat co-star Greg McHugh as a foul-mouthed hobo.

Video: British Comedy Awards interviews

Sara Shulman interviews Johnny Vegas, Steve Coogan, Jack Whitehall, Vicki Pepperdine, Joanna Scanlan, Tom Rosenthal and Ryan Sampson at The British Comedy Awards.