Jane Anderson (I)

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.

As the red-hot debate on how London-centric and middle-class Radio 4 is (or is not) continues to rage, one of the shows at the heat of the fire returns for its 25th series. Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis's takes on the week's news are the best in current satirical shows for thousands, but the work of 'self-satisfied, self-appointed, elite, liberal London tosspots' according to one dissatisfied listener. I really don't understand what all the fuss is about. If you haven't laughed after the first five minutes, then switch off and wait for he Archers.

Out to Lunch is followed by satirical sitcom On the Blog about a desperate frustrated 37-year-old nerd who sits around in his underpants while working at (aka playing with) his computer. Caroline Quentin provides the voice of the nerd's psychotic, ferret-killing, Czechoslovakian mother. It could have been a crass disaster, but instead it's a laugh-out-loud delight.

Mention the crack squad of code breakers working from Bletchley Park in the Second World War and thoughts turn to the brilliant young men of Robert Harris' novel Enigma. The team in this sitcom are more of a crap squad and have been placed inside Hut 33 where their incompetence - more social than work-related - can be safely hidden.

It's a bit like Dad's Army in as much as the humour is gentle and the characters are intrinsically appealing. But the humour is far saucier: Robert Bathurst plays an officer terrified by a sex-crazed barmaid, for example, while the jokes about gay sex would never have been allowed in Walmington-on-Sea.