Jack Whitehall

The battle of the Friday night chat shows is rejoined, with Graham Norton returning to the pitch Channel 4 rival Alan Carr has had to himself these past few weeks.

Norton is hitting big on opening night, with Hollywood legend Harrison Ford, on the promo trail for new movie Ender's Game, and the versatile Benedict Cumberbatch dropping by for a chat and Jack Whitehall providing the funnies.

Friday nights get a boost as the chat show returns after too long a break. Maybe it's because he packs his sofa with three celebrities simultaneously that Norton's shows go with a partyish swing. At best they can throw up the kind of unlikely encounters that give us a glimpse of the real person under the celebrity armour. Then again, that armour rarely comes thicker than Harrison Ford's: he pays a visit tonight to promote his new sci-fi movie Ender's Game.

More exciting is the visit of the hallowed Benedict Cumberbatch, fresh from playing Julian Assange on the big screen. Jack Whitehall will be on the comedy end of the couch while James Blunt provides the music.

Jack Whitehall: My dad, the touchline troublemaker

There are competitive fathers and there's Michael Whitehall. In an extract from their new book, Him & Me, actor and comedian Jack Whitehall explains how his dad received a lifetime touchline ban from the school sports field.

The school-based sitcom playground is getting pretty crowded, with the bell just rung on Big School and Jack Whitehall's Bad Education still running around dropping its shorts at anyone who's interested. But for my money the pick of the Class of 2013 is Some Girls (BBC3), which scores one vital A* over the opposition: it looks as though it's set in a school that might actually exist.

On the face of it, the group of south London bffs at the heart of Some Girls is painfully PC: one sorted black girl, one ditzy white blonde, one brainy Asian and one baby Kathy Burke. So it's full credit to the spark in the writing of Bernadette Davies and a set of confident performances from the four leads that this formula adds up to more than the sum of its parts. It works.

Led from the front by Adelayo Adedayo as Viva, who was facing down the tricky issue of dumping a fit boyfriend who was too thick for her, last night's episode centred on the sudden death of a science teacher - cue the arrival of Broadchurch's Jonathan Bailey as unashamed lust object - and the fallout therein.

It was all dealt with delightfully distastefully, as voiced by the straight-talking Aussie gym teacher/resident hard-faced bitch: 'We'll provide a counsellor - if you can't talk it over with your mates like a normal person.'

Two panels of celebrities led by David Mitchell and Phill Jupitus. An extremely sarcastic host with a distinctive laugh. And the occasional run-in with Ofcom and certain newspapers when someone (hello Jack Whitehall) takes things too far. Yes, it can only be Channel 4's quick-witted pub-quiz-style-show, which returns with some fiendish questions about the 1980s. Most of the guests should have no trouble recalling the events of that decade but we are a bit concerned about how much Alan Carr will remember. He wasn't born until 1976.

Poor Jon Richardson. Tonight's guest comic is given the chance of a lifetime: to take a rugby conversion at Twickenham Stadium in front of a capacity crowd. It's a typically blockbuster challenge for this sports entertainment quiz - if only Jon's kicking skills were of the same level. Three disastrous attempts later and the dream has turned into a nightmare, with the Six Nations crowd and host James Corden mercilessly jeering his spindly efforts.

Man City footballer Joleon Lescott is also in the studio. Fair play to the England defender for taking part; shame that when encouraged to get involved by Corden and Jack Whitehall, his quick wit is found seriously wanting.

In what must have been a slow week for the writers, tonight's show seems geared up simply to make regular panellist Jack Whitehall look as weedy as possible. Donning a skimpy training vest, he takes on ripped England rugby international Chris Ashton in a Strongest Man contest, hauling a three-and-a-half-ton truck while being goaded by the obscenely bulky British strongman Jay "Hollywood£ Hughes.

Thankfully, guest Richard Ayoade from The IT Crowd is ready to strike a blow for the physically deficient. "What do you want to know, big man?" asks pundit Jamie Redknapp. "I am neither big... nor a man," replies Ayoade, fantastically puncturing try-hard Jamie's laddish exuberance. Speaking of silly boys, let's get to the bottom of why Ashton thought "dwarf tossing" in the 2011 World Cup was a good idea.

I remember teachers exactly like Alfie (Jack Whitehall), who desperately sucked up to the classes that bullied them. We had a German master who turned his "lessons" into an eternal Rubik's Cube competition (prizes of cash and Smarties).

At Abbey Grove School's swimming gala, the wimpish Alfie claimed a chlorine allergy so bad it would turn him "from Jamie Redknapp to Harry Redknapp just like that". But then, in the cause of trying to prove his class wasn't a bunch of complete losers, he agreed to enter the synchronised diving contest and his face swelled up until he looked like Avid Merrion in Bo' Selecta!. God, it was funny. I sniggered all the way through and then - old habits die hard - nipped out for a bag of cheese and onion crisps, the swimming gala snack of choice, whether you're 14 or 40.

The decision to make the classroom comedy by Jack Whitehall available in advance on iPlayer - the flagship for BBC3's plan to push all its comedy that way - paid off with a big hike in the audience for a farcical mix of wit and slapstick. Tonight, Alfie, Whitehall's overgrown kid of a teacher, has his nose put firmly out of joint when new teacher Mr Schwimer dazzles his pet pupils with his all-American charms. How will Alfie bite back?

As ever, Bad Education isn't really about the plotting. Tonight's paper-thin scenario involves a hotshot American teacher arriving at the school, taking over Alfie's class and making the kids love him. So far, so predictable. But writer and lead Jack Whitehall has an enviable way with a one-liner and a remarkable eye for the feeble posturing of male loserdom.

It's hard to work out which of the male teachers is more cringeworthy. Is it the pathetically needy Alfie? Or Mr Fraser, the self-proclaimed 'Archbishop of Banterbury'? Actually, tonight it's probably Mr Schwimmer, the Yank with his secrets and lies. Whitehall doesn't write women quite as well - Mrs Pickwell increasingly feels like a dangerously close copy of Michelle Gomez's Green Wing character Sue White - but this is still an incredibly entertaining half hour.