John Cleese

John Cleese once said that it was harder to be funny than to be clever. The Cambridge-educated Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller obviously decided to take the high road and go for funny in the second series of The Armstrong and Miller Show.

Their sketches have no point or satirical edge to them. Teachers doing acrobatics while their pupils' backs are turned during an exam, an accident-prone art presenter, even their famous street-talking RAF men have nothing to say. Yet most of the stuff - barring a terrible Star Trek sketch that could have come out of Morecambe and Wise - works. The Blue Peter presenters apologising in child-speak for their off-air decadences may even turn into a classic.

The performances are meticulous. Particularly to be savoured on Friday was Armstrong's tactical use of accents: the northern Blue Peter man's pronunciation of "film" with an extra couple of Ls in it, and the info-commercial guy's voice suddenly dropping a few social classes when it came to saying "three tharsand peounds". There is cleverness here, but it is in the detail.

Sitcoms don't get any funnier than Fawlty Towers

Basil Fawlty was rude, snobby, smarmy, hen-pecked, quick to anger, sarcastic and prudish - in the words of his creator, John Cleese, "an absolutely awful human being." But this unforgettable character stood at the center of one of the funniest sitcoms in television history, Fawlty Towers.

Forty years ago this week, Nixon was withdrawing troops from Vietnam, Je T'Aime topped the charts and Concorde broke the sound barrier. And then for something completely different: the first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus aired on BBC One. We never looked at comedy - let alone Spam, parrots or lumberjacks - in the same way again. This new film celebrates the anarchic troupe's Ruby Jubilee and marks the first time the surviving Pythons have come together for a project since 1983's The Meaning of Life. It's archly subtitled The Lawyer's Cut and those Beeb briefs have been busy because it's slimmed down from a six-hour series screened in the US (as Terry Jones says, "a record so complete and faithful to the truth that I don't need to watch it") to just 60 minutes. Directed by Alan Parker, it features new interviews with Jones, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and Eric Idle, as well as archive chat from the late Graham Chapman. All tell the story of how they met at Oxbridge and The Frost Report, created trailblazing television, made the transition into films and ultimately became a British institution. Which, like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expected.

Mitchell and Webb Interview

As That Mitchell and Webb Look returns for a third series, its two stars tell The Telegraph that today's comedies are as good as anything from the Seventies, whatever John Cleese says.

Now here's an interesting way to celebrate the 30th birthday of a classic sitcom. For the first time ever, John Cleese reveals his favourite scenes Fawlty Towers. No clues yet as to which ones they will be but there's the added bonus of the likes of Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Mitchell and Webb, Eddie Izzard and AA Gill reminiscing about these magic moments. Possibly even more interesting will be the comments from the owners of Gleanagles Hotel, which was the real-life inspiration for Fawlty Towers.

It may have only been 12 episodes, but more than 30 years after its debut Fawlty Towers remains one of our favourite sitcoms. This documentary looks at how the show came into being and why it turned out a classic. Michael Palin suggests it's survived because its "precision comedy" and Basil Fawlty's hysterical character were a symptom of the times. Not everyone was enamoured with it though - a BBC executive described it as "dire". Cast members John Cleese, Connie Booth, Andrew Sachs and Prunella Scales all contribute their recollections of making the programme.

John Cleese Interview

Here's what John Cleese had to say about it all.

"Don't mind Eddie, he likes to call a spade a spade. It's when he calls me a spade that I mind!"

Such is the power of sitcom that those two lines from Love Thy Neighbour are still fresh in my memory after nearly 40 years. Possibly because it is such a dreadful joke, possibly because every joke in Love Thy Neighbour was a variation on it.

Back in the seventies and early eighties, the humble sitcom was the meat and potatoes of British broadcasting, providing millions with unsophisticated but satisfying fare. This was before the genre was elevated to an art form, subjected to quality control and critically scrutinised to death. Or called a genre, for that matter.

Beyond a Joke takes us back to those glory days and places classic, and not so classic, British sitcoms into their social and historical context.

Which makes Beyond a Joke sound as dry as dust, but it really isn't. For one thing, the programme takes full advantage of the archives, cherry picking all of the best moments to make its point. And in a welcome change from the usual clip show convention of recruiting unknown stand-up comedians and former children's TV presenters to blab inanities, it invites actual informed opinion from such illustrious contributors as Tony Benn, John Cleese and Dick Clement.

Episode one was all about class, a rich vein of humour that sitcoms of the period mined extensively. We saw Captain Mainwaring bristle with indignation as Sergeant Wilson joined the golf club, Basil Fawlty fawning over an aristocratic guest, Margot Ledbetter locking horns with the local council. Plus Stan from On The Buses trying to sneak a dolly bird upstairs past his disapproving extended family. Which accurately reflected the enduring post-war housing shortage, but made a less than convincing case for Reg Varney as a sex god.

All of which was linked by Dave Lamb's suitably jaunty narration.

Fawlty Dour

Fawlty Towers legend John Cleese blasted modern British TV comedy yesterday - claiming it is past its best.

Cleese rules out return of Fawlty

The Fawlty Towers cast will never make another episode because they are "too old and tired", John Cleese has said.