Jamie Demetriou

The World Of Simon Rich review

It's in the longer fictions in which the show finds its own place and pace, with an unhurried storytelling that sets up delightful images. The absurdity starts with a whimsical Alice In Wonderland-style tale about a nine-year-old girl and her adventures with a waistcoated goat.

Rovers - football comedy that doesn't quite score

The reunion of The Royle Family stars Craig Cash and Sue Johnston is welcome - but this new sitcom is pleasurable rather than honkingly funny.

Rovers: warm-hearted comedy with shades of Royle Family

Cash's work in the late Nineties paved the way for the success of Peter Kay's more raucous Phoenix Nights and subsequent sitcoms. The triumph of the recent Car Share might have reignited interest in warm-hearted comedy, but, at the moment, Rovers feels too mild. Yet character comedy such as this requires a long acquaintance - by the end of the run, we may have fallen in love with the gentle dreamers of the Redbridge Rovers' Clubhouse.

Rovers, Sky1, review

Lo-fi football sitcom starring Craig Cash and Sue Johnston has its heart in the right place.

Rovers: Premier League line-up puts the fun in footie

It makes sense for a football-themed comedy to air not only in the wake of underdog Leicester City's recent fairytale triumph, but also in the fever-pitch build-up to Euro 2016.

Rovers review

Nothing much happens of note in this world, and it's the comedy of contented smiles rather than gut-busing belly laughs. But Rovers is warmly amusing throughout, with a strong whiff of authenticity and characters you like spending time with. "Everyone's really nice, aren't they?" says Sam after meeting the tiny fan club. Yep, Sam, they are.

@elevenish - bonkers, biting, brilliant

Offbeat TV comedy has been in the doldrums since the likes of The Mighty Boosh, but a strange new show called @elevenish may just change all that.

This topical comedy show brings together young British comics, including Dane Baptiste, Ivo Graham, Rhys James, Ellie White and Jamie Demetriou. It feels like a scattershot ensemble, but makes slightly more sense when you learn this is being positioned as a reboot of The 11 O'Clock Show, the late-90s format that helped to shape the current comedy mainstream by employing everyone from Ricky Gervais to Sacha Baron Cohen, David Mitchell, Robert Webb, Charlie Brooker and Robert Popper.

It takes quite a script to make Bradley Walsh seem mannered, and the likes of Kayvan Novak, Jamie Demetriou and Keith Allen vanish into the background, and I can only surmise that the actors fancied a spot of filming in the sun. Neil Webster and Charlie Skelton's sitcom told of an undercover reporter on the run on a Spanish island.