John Barrowman (I)

In which Celebrity Juice's Keith Lemon and Take Me Out's Paddy McGuinness recreate a host of iconic movies with the help of a range of celebrity guests and friends. This week it's Dirty Dancing getting a remix with stars including Larry Lamb, Kimberly Wyatt, John Barrowman and Jessica Hynes (Oh God, why, Jessica?) pitching up to help out, while Keith plays Jennifer Grey's Baby with Paddy as Mr Swayze. It's bloody awful.

After buying a house with a tennis court attached, Jonathan Ross developed a love of the game that finds him knocking up with a comedy coterie including Michael McIntyre, Jimmy Carr and David Baddiel. Tips from a Wimbledon champion are quite another thing, though, and having predicted that Andy Murray would triumph earlier this year, Ross welcomes him to the sofa to relive his glories.

They're joined by Celine Dion, whose new studio album Loved Me Back To Life is her first big English-language release since 2007. Perhaps unfairly, neither Murray nor Dion are known for their comedy punchlines, so Johnny Vegas and John Barrowman will be bringing the funny.

New sketch comedies have been so mediocre recently that the format itself has sometimes looked on its last legs. However, portents for this new show are good. For a start, Robert Popper is producing. Also, it's been dropped straight into the BBC2 schedules without the customary trial period on BBC3/4, which indicates a certain assurance. Sadly, this confidence seems misplaced. Lorna Watson and Ingrid Oliver have good chemistry, but the scripts and ideas remain resolutely earthbound. There's a sketch lampooning mannered costume dramas. An extended, tedious musical turn from John Barrowman. A sketch about the enduring hilarity of working-class people's vocabulary and speech patterns. But nothing to suggest that Watson and Oliver might buck the trend.

Having hoovered up several comedy awards with their stage act, Watson & Oliver have been entrusted with their own BBC2 sketch show and the initial results are encouraging.

Do not expect any comedy revolution as their approach is remorselessly mainstream, inevitably inviting comparison with French And Saunders - did I mention that Watson and Oliver are women? However, the material is genuinely funny and the performances winning. Allowing for the fact all sketch shows are inherently inconsistent I'd say their first episode registered around a 75% success rate, which is good.

They also deserve credit for a particularly high-risk finale, which saw the pair fight for the right to share a show-stopping duet with guest star John Barrowman. All teeth, jazz hands and unconfined ego, Barrowman sent himself up with an enthusiasm that threatened to overwhelm his hosts, but they weathered the storm of upstaging intact.

It only remains to be seen if Watson & Oliver will fall prey to the dominant trend among sketch shows of lazily recycling the same gags and characters, albeit with minor modifications, throughout the remainder of the series.

Are Lorna Watson and Ingrid Oliver poised to become the next French and Saunders?

They've got the talent and are both immensely likeable, but what they're lacking right now is better material.

There's nothing in the first outing for their new sketch show to dislike, but nothing that really stakes out new comedy ground for female comedians in the way that Smack The Pony or Catherine Tate did. A take-off of Kate and Wills capitalises on Ingrid Oliver's passing resemblance to Kate, but doesn't really know where it's going.

What's most worrying is that they deliberately let their guest star John Barrowman steal all their laughs as well.

Eric and Ernie might have used stage stars to their ­advantage, but Watson and Oliver are a long way from being Morecambe and Wise.

We're not writing them off yet - we're just saying they should write off their writers and get some new ones.

It would be so easy to shoot this sketch show by a couple of relatively unknown comedians, Lorna Watson and Ingrid Oliver, right out of the water. I could say that on the whole it's pretty poor, with a few thin laughs in a clutch of woefully under-written sketches. I could say that Watson & Oliver must have known it was in trouble when it gave a substantial guest spot here to John Barrowman playing a preening, narcissistic version of himself.

I could add that with a lot more work Watson & Oliver might find themselves a niche on television after a successful live-performance career. I could say all of these things. But I won't.

Terry Wogan is on the panel this evening, so you know it's only a matter of time before host Rob Brydon employs his scarily accurate impersonation of the great broadcaster. But he's not the only one present with a facility for accents, as comedian Kevin Bridges proves when he drops his Scottish brogue quicker than you can say "John Barrowman".

As ever, though, it's the forensic cross-examinations that make the show, particularly those directed at Sir Terry, who has to convince the opposing team that he performs minor acts of arson for kicks and begins his Christmas Day celebrations in a most unorthodox manner. You'll also get a strange buzz when he says the words "blank" and "blanks" again after so many years.

John Barrowman heads guest stars for Watson and Oliver

Stars from backgrounds as diverse as The Full Monty, Alan Partridge and Torchwood have been lined up to guest in new BBC Two sketch show Watson and Oliver.

I was never a fan of the practical jokes of The Unforgettable Jeremy Beadle - in fact, I think I had forgotten him until this tribute - but it certainly did its job in changing my opinion of the man himself. Frankly, it's almost impossible for me to dislike someone who loved books so much that he had an extension built onto his house to hold his library of 30,000 - that's living the dream! He was even buried under a gravestone representing books, with the epitaph "Ask my friends" and that's what this show did, eliciting what seemed to be genuinely heartfelt memories of a decent chap.

As well as being an apparently good father, stepfather, husband and friend, he relentlessly raised money for charity through marathon quiz sessions and auctions - around £100 million. "Oh, that's just showing off," said his former Game For A Laugh co-star Matthew Kelly, in awe.

But he still became something of a hate figure, once coming second to Saddam Hussein in an unpopularity poll, and a by-word for a type of trashy telly which, nevertheless, flourished even after he was dumped from his prime time slots. His family said he was hurt by the reversal of fortunes and, as fellow quasi-hate figure Chris Tarrant pointed out, it was strange how he went from being over-exposed to being a TV pariah for years, only able to appear in panto villain roles like Ant & Dec's Banged up with Beadle slot.

Ironically, he'd have probably fared better in today's celeb-crazy television environment; he could have made a good guest on Who Do You Think You Are, fronted a documentary on disability or just gone round the country on a spacehopper or something. And yet, there's a lesson there: Jeremy Beadle's fall wasn't due to his own failings or a sudden turn against cheesy pranks (still going strong on John Barrowman's excruciating Tonight's The Night). People just got sick of the sight of him - and today's actors, presenters and rent-a-guests should probably take note.