Jane Horrocks

Stephanie Beacham has been such a cracking addition to the cast in this second series. As store manager Lorraine we love her pillarbox-red talons and lipstick, that hair scraped into a Bet Lynch beehive and - most of all - her growling putdowns: "Friendships are overrated," she tells the simpering Julie (Jane Horrocks). "I had one once at school. Never again."

However, not everyone is impressed by the new regime - Andy, for one, despairs at the introduction of a ticket machine for customers. Could this be the start of a slippery slope towards a fully automated meat counter and eventual unemployment for all human beings? "It's just like Terminator," he frets.

There's something delightfully natural about the observant supermarket-set comedy, which continues its second season tonight. As Gavin (Jason Watkins) returns for his first scheduled visit as area manager, he's somewhat annoyed that no one seems to have missed him. Julie (Jane Horrocks), meanwhile, is treading lightly around the store's new manager, Lorraine (Stephanie Beacham).

The supermarket comedy returns with a formidable new cast member: Dynasty and more recently Corrie star Stephanie Beacham.

As no-nonsense new manager Lorraine, she flounces around the store, eyes flashing, while her staff tremble. Most nervy of all is deputy manager Julie (a wonderfully twitchy Jane Horrocks), who is heartbroken that her beloved Gavin is leaving to be area manager, still blissfully unaware of her ardour.

Meanwhile, the cantankerous head butcher (Mark Addy) splashes on some cheap perfume, sashays into the new boss's office and turns on the charm. Alas, not all goes to plan...

Fans of middling supermarket-based sitcoms, fear not. Once again you can get your fill of shelf stacking-based mishaps as this northern comedy from the production company behind The IT Crowd and The Office returns. Gasp! - at the exquisite tension over the long-term future of the shop's ability to provide cut-to-order chunks of meat... Weep! - over the poignant human struggle to open a jammed pair of sliding doors... Yawn! - as a cheap visual gag is shoe-horned in which involves a leaving video for the store manager and a porn vid... Still, what the show lacks in plotting and script, it more than makes up for in terms of performances. A cast led by Jane Horrocks and Stephanie Beacham does such sterling work that it somehow renders this average, rather than tedious.

There are changes in store as Sky's supermarket sitcom returns for a new series. Enter new manager Lorraine (Stephanie Beacham), a bossy bombshell who seductively munches olives as she scares the Valco staff. Andy the butcher wastes no time in draping himself over her desk, while there are further rumblings of sauce in the stockroom. Neurotic management wannabe Julie (Jane Horrocks) gives Gavin a surprise send-off with disastrous consequences. The plot's predictable, but there are enough giggles and one-liners to keep it alive.

The supermarket sitcom returns for a second series - a reasonably worthy recipient of Sky's huge investment in comedy and drama. Trollied remains at its best when it concentrates on the observational rather than the smutty, and most interest lies in the ups and downs of the highly strung deputy store manager Julie (Jane Horrocks). In the opener, Gavin (Jason Watkins) is leaving and Julie wants to give him a send-off to remember, but there's also the arrival of the new store manager to contend with and hard-boiled Lorraine Chain (Stephanie Beacham) has plans to revamp the Warrington branch of Valco leaving butcher Andy (Mark Addy) worried.

Trollied, the little comedy that taught us just how enthralling life in a budget supermarket can be, returns for its second series this week with a new boss - Dynasty ice queen Stephanie Beacham.

Episode one sees the Valco gang trying to adjust to life under their new boss - something that Julie (Jane Horrocks) in particular struggles with as she pines over her lost-love Gavin (Jason Watkins). The ladies' conflict comes to a head in the second instalment at 9.30pm when they differ over the store's new below-basic range. Trollied is far from a two-woman show though - Mark Addy, Nick Blood, Beverly Rudd and the rest of the crew are back as well, waiting for you to check them out.

Jennifer Saunders gave herself an Olympian challenge when she agreed to build an episode of her award-winning sitcom around London 2012.

She's managed it, though, with Absolutely Fabulous: Olympics (BBC1, 9.30pm).

Amid the Bolly, the bitching and the fags, her character Edina rents out her London home to a Hollywood A-lister for the Olympics.

However, no-one has told her that she is supposed to move out, along with her family and assistant Bubble (Jane Horrocks), To make matters worse, Edina's ex-husband and girlfriend turn up to stay for the Games.

There is some sports action - if you count Eddy and the fun-loving Patsy (Joanna Lumley) running
for glory in the Olympic stadium and managing to crash a celebrity reception attended by real-life Paralympics legend Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson.

Reviving a popular sitcom usually smacks of desperation, but as far as panto reunions go, the first of three new episodes of Absolutely Fabulous is quite good fun, despite the unwelcome intrusion of a desperately over-indulgent studio audience and the embarrassing mugging of Jane Horrocks in a lazily crowd-pleasing cameo.

Jennifer Saunders is probably incapable of delivering a mirthless script, and she's still a terrific comic performer. It also boasts that rarity: a genuinely surprising celebrity cameo.

A plot precis would ruin the central gag, but it remains what it always was: a big, broad, raucous comedy with some agreeably sharp edges. Plus it's perversely pleasing to hear jokes about crack and methadone on BBC1 on Christmas Day, if only because it will annoy people who get annoyed by things like that.

Previewers have been asked not to reveal which of the characters has been away "doing bird" (in Patsy's words), which makes writing about the first new Ab Fab episode in six years a little bit on the tangential side. Not to worry, it's a gem, embracing such intervening technological advances as iPads (Bubble tries to draw on hers) and Twitter. Eddie (Jennifer Saunders) is ballooning ("not even the credit crunch can tighten your belt"), Patsy (Joanna Lumley) decides to claim her pension - if only she can find evidence that she exists - while applauding the summer riots ("I love a bit of extreme shopping"), and Bubble (Jane Horrocks) gives a bravura one-woman summary of the royal wedding. All that and a short but sweet cameo from Sofie Grabol, Sarah Lund in The Killing - this is the first and best of the three, new, 20th anniversary episodes.