Jimmy Carr

A new panel show hosted by David Mitchell has to be worth a look. It's a quotation-based game, somewhere in tone between Radio 4's Quote Unquote and QI, as they all try to guess who said what or complete famous quotations. On one team Richard Ayoade turns out to be perfect to duel with, gainsay and generally neutralise Jimmy Carr - hilariously so. Micky Flanagan and Charlie Higson are on the opposing team.

The rhythms of the game itself are still a bit halting (it's early days) but the guests are funny enough that it barely matters - when Micky Flanagan impersonated David Mitchell being a bailiff, it's almost as if we're watching Would I Lie To You? - and in this genre there's no higher compliment.

Does David Mitchell ever catch Jimmy Carr's eye across the set of a crowded panel show and think: 'I know exactly what you're going to say here'? More opportunities for celebrity ennui tonight. This new series sees Mitchell in the chair, Carr as a guest and other usual suspects Micky Flanagan, Charlie Higson and Richard Ayoade making up the numbers.

The wild card is the slightly out-of-his-element guest David Harewood, who has presumably been selected for his boomingly stentorian voice, because the core of the show is quotes - famous ones, outlandish ones and obscure ones. It's not the most striking panel-show concept we've ever come across and, notwithstanding a couple of mildly amusing moments - including Harewood's scarily good Obama impression - it never quite gets off the ground.

Mitchell's other regular panel gig, Would I Lie to You?, has punched above its apparent weight for years now, but we'd bet against this proving similarly enduring.

Was It Something I Said?, yet another comedy panel show (this one based, with great originality, around quotations), has been hand-tooled to inherit Homeland's audience, not only going out directly after the new adventures of Carrie Mathison, but also featuring actor David Harewood - Homeland's now blown-to-smithereens CIA director David Estes - as guest quotation reader.

Host David Mitchell has, of course, been recently conducting a media discourse with Fast Show creator Charlie Higson over whether or not comedy panel shows are blocking other, rather more expensive forms of television comedy. Higson was a guest last night, so the timing of that spat makes you cynically wonder whether it wasn't merely pre-show publicity, or whether Higson had a genuinely bad time recording last night's opener.

Mitchell's riposte has been that panel shows are often more funny than scripted comedy, a view to which I'm not unsympathetic, especially when Richard Ayoade was holding forth last night, effortlessly neutralising supposed team-mate Jimmy Carr. Did I write neutralise, or did I mean neuter? These macho cockfights are the reason why female comedians give such shows a wide berth, and needless to say, all six panellists were male. Mitchell had even grown a Mumford-lush beard, while Carr appeared to be in the process of growing one - it was as if their faces were actively leaking testosterone.

A boon for those feeling starved of James Corden on our screens, as he and the gang return with a new series of the sports challenge show, with Red and Blue teams pitted against one another in the usual series of challenges. These include everything from a game of one-on-one football in zorb suits to a matchmaking game involving improbable celebrities including Steven Gerrard and Kim Cattrall, culminating in a speed quiz/assault course combo. Guests include Jamie Redknapp, Freddie Flintoff, Jimmy Carr and Jack Whitehall.

James Corden returns to referee the seventh season of the knockabout sports quiz that, thanks to its success, has pulled in a bigger budget - and they're gonna use it.

So if the prospect of comedy rally driving, bouncing around in plastic balls and a military assault course involving Jack Whitehall, Jimmy Carr and team skippers Andrew Flintoff and Jamie Redknapp sounds like your idea of fun, then this is the show for you.

Think Top Gear meets Total Wipeout.

A seventh series of the quiz that makes A Question of Sport look like Pathé newsreel of over-60s crown green bowling. These days the quiz questions are few and far between: with money almost visibly dripping from the screen, it's all about big stunts and big-name comics.

Tonight, the regulars - Jack Whitehall, Jimmy Carr, Jamie Redknapp, Andrew Flintoff and host James Corden - go rally-driving with near-fatal consequences, play football against Edgar Davids while stuck in giant plastic bouncy balls, and complete a hellish military assault course. In between are some very funny pre-arranged zingers - mostly delivered by Whitehall, so if you're not one of those people who's violently allergic to him, you're in business.

It's an unnerving combination - imagine waking up to it after jetlag, or a snooze on the sofa - but the mash-up between the irreverent panel show and the venerable quiz has been popular enough for Channel 4 to have a new batch made.

As long as Jimmy Carr is in the host's chair, he'll dominate the fight for the Countdown teapot, while the teams stretch themselves by trying to do the jokes and get a decent word at the same time; you don't get to be a TV comedian without a competitive streak. Tonight Sean Lock has Jason Manford on his side, while Jon Richardson forms a loose allegiance with Rhod Gilbert.

Jimmy Carr set for 2013 UK tour

If you like your humour sharp and caustic, Jimmy Carr is your man.

A wonderfully enjoyable edition opens with Jimmy Carr claiming that he was given coffee in his bottle as a baby and progresses through the idea that Susanna Reid may have held the Breakfast team's speed record for drinking a pint of beer ("How big are your glugs?" enquires host Rob Brydon) and that Dave Myers of The Hairy Bikers once spent Christmas locked inside a bank.

All these prompt enjoyable cross-examination but, as so often, it's David Mitchell's mock-exasperation that really lights the comic touchpaper. "We've been doing this show for a thousand years!" he wails at one point to Lee Mack. "I know everything about you, including the fact that you did not learn to drive in a hearse."