Jane Anderson (II)

The scourging of the Murdock empire is a goldmine of new material for comedians. The biggest audience guffaw in this returning series comes when interviewer Rhys Thomas asks his guest - fellow comedian Simon Day - if there really isn't anything that he wouldn't do for money. Day, fast as a whip, comes back with "Well, I wouldn't hack into people's phones." It's no secret that I love this series: it's akin to the empathetic questioning techniques of Kirsty Young or Victoria Derbyshire being channelled through Alexei Sayle or Steve Coogan - lots of insight, but even more laughs. Rhys does not push Day too closely on his addictive personality - something that the comic has been very open about in his recent autobiography - but we do get to hear about his spell in a borstal, which he refers to as being like "a violent boarding school".

Guy Fawkes was the subject of comedy sketch troupe The Penny Dreadfuls' first radio play back in 2009 and now they return with a sharp satire on the French Revolution. Richard E Grant plays Robespierre with so much camp abandon that he must have done his rehearsals in Millets, but the effect is sublimely clever. Robespierre was, after all, the architect of France's bloody Reign of Terror. Here, he is the master of the feeble pun and the half-baked aside. The drama imagines him in conversation with Marie-Thérèse (played by Sally Hawkins of Made in Dagenham fame), the spoilt, stroppy and scarily intelligent daughter of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. He's met his match.

A welcome return for the comedy series where the writing and acting are so tight they're in danger of cutting off your blood supply. The least attentive and most dangerous budget airline in the world - tag line: no job is too small but many, many are too difficult - is flying a party of adventurous tourists to the North Pole. Never has a tiredness for life been so malevolent as in the heart and mind of First Officer Richardson, played with sanguine vitriol by Roger Allam. Not known for his love and admiration of Captain Crieff (portrayed with suitably browbeaten desperation by Benedict Cumberbatch), this flight sees Richardson annihilate any morsel of dignity that the Captain had stored away. And, my goodness, is it funny to witness.

What links Salvador Dali, Bugs Bunny and Jeremy Beadle? They were all tricksters - characters who revelled in subverting other people's perceptions of reality. This unusual broadcast, which features pre-recorded material with live links from an April Fool's Day festival in New York, is the work of Toby Amies, himself a winner of the Dali Award at the 1999 International Surrealist Film Festival. He asks why it is so pleasurable to watch some hapless member of the public caught out on camera by an elaborate and, in most cases, totally illogical and unbelievable prank. But he also visits the dark side of media mischief with the woman who phoned her husband while live on US radio to "reveal" that he was not the father of their son (ha, ha, what a jape) - only for the angered man to declare that he'd been sleeping with her sister for the last year. When pranks go bad...

When this comedy series dropped into the schedules last year I listened and I did not get it. This was my radio equivalent of Miranda over on BBC2 (which has still to make my mouth vaguely twitch, let alone invoke laughter). But the fact that it reunited Gordon Kennedy and Jack Doherty from Absolutely made me stick with it and my steadfastness was rewarded by the comedy fairy. Or, rather, the comedy warlock. Mordrin McDonald is to wizardry what Rab C Nesbitt was to elocution: he is a procrastinating, lethargic waste of space who expects the worst from the world and is never disappointed. This opener to the new series sees him forced, once more, into a heroic act and the dry one-liners are first-rate. Maybe it's time for me to give Miranda another try?

Hell's intake is at its highest since records began. Satan is beginning to feel the strain and the last thing he needs, quite frankly, is all the palaver of Christmas "In the world of men it's December, so they're having their annual moronfest... a soaked in sentimental tosh about a fat old man who comes down chimneys with presents for children and who, in real life, would probably be shot as a paedophile trespasser." Bah, humbug, Mr Beelzebub. And so, Satan descends upon Earth to do his best to cancel Christmas. Boundaries of taste will be pushed to the limits, as always, by Andy Hamilton and co, but it's the funniest thing on air this fortnight.

This is the Drop the Dead Donkey de nos jours: the divide in the paper's newsroom between the been-there-done-that- wrote-the-original-headline old hack and the ice-cool-stab-you-in-the-back-as- soon-as-look-at-you thrusting young turk is as vast as the print-run for the Radio Times Christmas double issue. You don't have to have worked as a journalist to find this funny. The writing is tight, the characters astutely observed and the situation comedy inclusive. John Sessions is particularly good as the disgruntled hack in a plot that sees him gain revenge on all via a whelk stand in Essex.

There's a lovely bit of bonding going on in tonight's edition as last week's interviewee, Ruby Wax, selects actor and comedian Harry Shearer as the guest she would most like to probe. Both are from the other side of the Pond but share an astutely observed fondness for the British and, indeed, for Radio 4. Shearer is best known here for his range of Simpsons voices and as Spinal Tap bassist Derek Smalls, but in the States he's hosted a syndicated satirical radio show since 1983. Their combined wit and experience is electrifying.

Justin is a local radio DJ who no-one listens to out of choice. He's in his 30s, lives with his father-in-law (an avid toy train collector) and is in the middle of being divorced by a vitriolic wife. Justin's life is not much fun, until he gets a date with a hot young estate agent. This is the cue for line after line of quick-fire comic retorts and character comedy. Some are exquisite - going to a Lloyd Webber musical is reckoned to be worse than having sex with the blind old tramp who lives in the phone box - but others are unimaginatively sexist. Not bad for a pilot, though. One to watch out for.

BBC Radio 2's Comedy Season launches with the return of the irreverent comedy panel show hosted by Claudia Winkleman. Comics and commentators are thrust into the silicon-filled world of glossy magazines and showbiz columns, for a unique take on the week's most "important" celebrity news. As with the people they are laughing at, there are no teams - it's everyone for themselves. Guests on the opening show are Rufus Hound, Jo Caulfield and Dom Joly.