Jane Anderson (II)

Popular culture is dangerously entertaining: the desire to consume leaves us helpless and clueless. Thanks heavens for the razor-sharp brain cells of David Quantick who, in this new series, presents a fast-moving and genuinely comical guide to culture. Front Row fans need not feel left out: he, and his assembled team of players, musicians and comedians, will be sneering at highbrow as well as Neanderthal-level performances through the medium of song, sketches, poems, reviews and interviews.

David Mitchell's amiability as host does not stop him from taking the mickey out of his guests when they deserve it. For those who've yet to experience this show, the panellists are each asked to provide a short lecture on a given subject. They pack their talk with lies and bamboozle their opponents with so much duff information in the hope that they'll miss the four pieces of truth that have been slipped in.

To find myself recommending a makeover of any genre is a first for me. But the 15 Minute Musical is hardly in the same league as those bowel-evacuation-obsessed offerings on television.

In this series written by the sharply pointed comic nibs of Dave Cohen, David Quantick and Richie Webb, celebrities and politicians get a West End revamp, and in timely fashion, following last night's US Presidential Elections, the focus here is on Barack Obama. But that's where all actuality ends, for this is summer lovin' (and loathin') in the style of Grease. Obama is the John Travolta character and his Olivia Newton-John equivalent is Hillary Clinton.

As musicals go, its main attraction is the power to invoke an entirely enjoyable cringe. As song-writing goes, this is the one and only time you'll ever here 'Hillary' rhymed with 'ancillary' and 'capillary'. Genius.

Tina C, country superstar and US presidential hopeful, is also the queen of doubles entendres. Even her name is a play on words: she hails from Nashville (Tennessee). Her alter ego is comedian Christopher Green but for the next four weeks there's no sign of him as Tina tours Australia, pushing the boundaries of good taste to the absolute limit. Her pronunciation of the words 'Aborogynal' and 'indigenous' introduces groins where they've never been spotted before. This is a comic creation in the style of Kenny Everett's Cupid Stunt. I love her, but she's not to everyone's taste.

As his delectable series on how to get by in cultured company begins a new run we asked David Quantick what we could expect to hear this time: The Blagger's returns like a prodigal pig, if there is such a thing, he said. And for those who've never encountered it before, this is the perfect introduction to the style of Mr Quantick's advice: what he says sounds believable, but there's always a gentle fib or even an outrageous lie to counteract any actual truths that he might offer up. This time he's teaching us everything we ever needed to know about country and western music.

Ed Reardon, the writer who made a name for himself by creating a seminal episode of Tenko, is back, and this time he's sharing his one bedroom apartment with a woman. Fans of this series, the funniest sitcom ever to grace Radio 4, will be delighted to learn that this, being Ed Reardon's love-life, is destined to fail. Despite the fact that his lady friend is a fellow writer - hence they can share the pleasures of buying scratchcards and tobacco - even she finds his sneering and his sarcasm too much to bear.

Nat Segnit looks like an anagram but he is, in fact, a comedy writer and performer. This new series purports to be a set of interviews with strange men, recorded by Nat over the course of a year on British trains, but is, in fact, an entirely fictional set of conversations, conceived by Segnit and then developed in improvisation with actor Stewart Wright.

Like The Mighty Boosh or The League of Gentlemen, Strangers on Trains is not easily taken in or fully comprehended on first encounter. Having listened to all six parts, I am impressed - Wright turns in convincing accents and his out-there stories are perfectly counterbalanced by Segnit's grounded 'interview technique'. This opening episode features train-based encounters with a poetic postman from Wales and a lifeguard who patrols a river using his own complex grid system. It's worth sticking with - this could be a first-class comedy.

The fourth edition of this five-star sitcom opens with what is now a running joke on how the budget airline crew either don't know or don't care about the technicalities of taking off, flying or landing.

I've listened every week, expecting it to crash land but John Finnemore's writing flies in first class. And then there's Roger Allam's performance as the bitter first officer who despises his captain. He is to sarcasm and sneering what Rowan Atkinson's Blackadder was to, well, sarcasm and sneering. Radio sitcom success stories are rare: let's hope this one's in from the long haul.

Why do you have to sit in chairs designed to hold the bottom of a five-year-old when you visit your child's form teacher at parents' evening?

It's playful accurate observations like this that make comedian Jason Byrne such an engaging host. He ensures life's shared experiences - starting with education - are far funnier than they ever seemed at the time.

Well-defined characters, strong casting and great writing do a good sitcom make. Sounds easy, but few get it right. I am, therefore, delighted to announce that this new series is so funny that I listened to it three times in a row, laughing more loudly each time at the lines I now knew were coming.

It's set in a small airline company staffed by two pilots and run by a forbidding 60-something woman who, one of her staff suggests, sharpens rather than brushes her teeth in the morning. Roger Allam's character is on a par with Basil Fawlty as the embittered pilot on his way down.