John Simpson (I)

OK. It's 8.30. That's Christmas over." It was a dream of sorts, uttered by a woman who knew she was at the sharp end of the wrapping-paper-clearance, greasy-pots end of the annual celebration and, just in case you were wondering, it was half past eight in the morning, as Sue from Outnumbered began the familiar cat-drive involved in getting the family to the airport on time.

This year, she had vowed, it was going to be different. They were going away for a short break in the Canaries after a stressful few months that had included bedding infestation and over-reaction by the social services. This being Outnumbered, of course, several towering hurdles stood between that consummation and the chaotic starting line of Christmas breakfast. For the moment, nobody is going anywhere. Ben is a little disappointed with the contents of The Dangerous Book for Boys ("There's nothing about firework shoes in here. Look. 'Grinding an Italic Nib'. What's dangerous about that?") Karen, the six-year old, is in the bathroom shaving (for some reason not explained) and Sue herself is fretting about whether to leave Grandad in hospital over the festive season. "We need a break from Mum needing a break," pleaded Jake meaningfully when cancellation was mooted.

It must be a little wearing maintaining this level of anxiety and there are some signs that Outnumbered is feeling its age. This is partly because the children themselves are growing up but can't entirely be allowed to do so if the comic balance is to be maintained (if only they were drawn like Bart and Lisa). In fact, now and then, there's a sense that they've become caricatures of themselves, straining for effects that seemed entirely fresh in the first series. Characters in a comedy can't really learn, of course, but the underlying naturalism of Outnumbered (its implicit promise that parenthood really is like this) also results in an odd strain between laughter and credulity. Wouldn't they have packed the night before, you find yourself asking, and perhaps dropped in on Grandad on the way to the airport when everything was sorted? Are they being clueless by design? The answer to the last question is "Yes, idiot, they're made-up", but that isn't what you want to be thinking about in a comedy.

It's still funnier than any other family sitcom, as good at sight gags (Ben marching purposefully past the window with a pickaxe at one point) as it is with dialogue. "Oh, look... there's the Queen doing her Christmas thing," said Grandpa brightly, watching the television in his hospital room. "No, Grandad," replied Jake patiently, "that's John Simpson." And though I don't buy for a second that parents this scarred would have let Ben make the sandwiches for the car journey unsupervised (he offers a choice of treacle and mayonnaise or chocolate and stilton bap), they essentially earned the moment of uplift with which all Christmas programmes are obliged to end - in this case, a family sing-song round Grandad's hospital bed.

"Jack Dee, with your face like a neglected radish, like a cowboy's crack, like a forgotten tunnel..." Shooting Stars continues to be far funnier than a 17-year-old comedy on its seventh series should be, by way of sticking to what it does best. Tonight, that involves getting Tulisa from N'Dubz and John Simpson into the same room and throwing edam on to Brendan Cole's face. Angelos Epithemiou does a fine job of keeping score - something that doesn't always come easy to football pundit Chris Kamara, who gamely takes all mockery on the chin.

Even at its height in the Nineties, Shooting Stars was an acquired taste: some found it gloriously surreal, others thought it annoyingly puerile. Nowadays, though, it feels dated and superfluous. Still there are some enjoyable moments, mainly involving the lugubrious scorekeeper Angelos Epithemiou. Tonight, hosts Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer and captains "Ulri-ka-ka-ka" Jonsson and Jack Dee are joined by Strictly dancer Brendan Cole, cultishly incompetent football pundit Chris Kamara, war reporter John Simpson and Tulisa from pop group N-Dubz.

Dynamic duo Vic and Bob may be less nimble these days but their absurd mess-around is never boring. Tonight there's bit of madness involving a clarinet, and a cracking running gag that centres on the polarity of professions between guests Brendan Cole (dancer) and John Simpson (war correspondent), while simpleton Angelos continues to be a fine replacement for George Dawes.

This comedy drama that's mercilessly taking the myth out of BBC war reporting is something of a hidden gem. Indeed, we hear that John Simpson, John Sergeant and Martin Bell have actually gone to war themselves over which one of them the wonderful David Bradburn (Martin Jarvis) is based on. Tonight, David throws his fags out the pram when media darling Jeremy Pax - sorry, Jeremy Morrison - is drafted in to report on a ceasefire...

Taking the Flak is a satire on TV foreign correspondents. More precisely, it is a satire on John Simpson, the BBC's foreign editor. David Bradburn, played by Martin Jarvis, is about the same age, weight and hirsuteness as Simpson and is the BBC's "chief foreign editor". It must have been good fun for BBC people to guy Simpson - who has, to be sure, a measure of the pomposity all famous broadcasters acquire. But to make him into a womanising, fraudulent vampire, sucking the facts out of local stringers and fixers in order to feed his self-dramatising "pieces to camera", is a terrible thing to do to this boldest and most illuminating of reporters. Still, satire is unfair by nature. Broadcasters dish out much worse to politicians and other public figures who don't have their comfort and salaries, and it would be fine if it were funny. But it's very bad.

Taking the Flak (BBC2), which competes for the same airtime, begins promisingly enough. Harry, the local stringer in Karibu, is doing a piece to camera: "This ancient country, 38 times the size of Wales, is in desperate need." (Any plague-spot of indeterminate location is always compared to Wales. Wales is not quite sure how to take this.) Over his shoulder, the cheerful life of Karibu pursued the even tenor of its way.

At this point the BBC's visiting firemen arrived, to cover the crisis, led by Martin Jarvis (playing, lets face it, John Simpson), and it all went to hell in a handcart. (Perhaps Susie Dent can explain the handcart.) The plot was chaotic. The locals were not always intelligible. And I am very sorry for the woman from the World Service who had to mime incessant diarrhoea. You wonder if the trip to Kenya was worth the shilling, as some of the funniest scenes were back at the BBC where Nigel (Mackenzie Crook) was holding the fort with minimal fortitude ("The editor of the six is literally foaming at the mouth. He bit a picture researcher").

Andy Hamilton was asked recently why he stopped writing Drop the Dead Donkey, the granddaddy of this genre, and he said you couldn't keep up. Damien Day - GlobeLink's shameless star reporter - putting a teddy bear on a bombed building would be considered quite mild now.

TV Review: John Simpson on Taking the Flak

War reporter John Simpson reviews Taking the Flak, BBC Two's new comedy drama about a team of news reporters in war-torn Africa, whose lead character is not entirely unlike Simpson himself.

Pompous, self-absorbed foreign correspondents were set up as the fall guys in Taking The Flak and heaven knows the John Simpson school of tank-riding self-aggrandisement is a sitting duck. But though it energetically flailed around in a fictional African nation teetering on the brink of civil war, the intended satire ended up as flabby as its intended target. Why it was stretched out to an hour when the late, great Drop The Dead Donkey would have filed a similar story in a pithy 25 minutes was a mystery.

Way too much time was spent on the state of a female World Service correspondent's bowels, an enervating side issue which repeatedly sucked the momentum out of a supposed comedy thriller involving boy soldiers and a hostage situation. And there you had the problem. BBC Four comedy drama Getting On showed it is possible to find laughs in the darkest corners of the human soul. But Taking The Flak flipped the coin and showed how tasteless it is when you get it wrong.

"This ancient country, 38 times the size of Wales, is in desperate need." So begins BBC correspondent Harry Chambers' piece to camera from a central African republic at the start of this spoof on foreign news reporting. "It wouldn't take much to make a difference here," he adds, "A visit by Angelina Jolie or Fearne Cotton... perhaps even a simple, one-off drama by Richard Curtis." It's one of the better jokes in what turns out to be a rambling farce set under African skies - imagine Drop the Dead Donkey crossed with Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. Martin Jarvis is enjoyable as a John Simpson-style foreign editor who flies in to take over any story when it gets big enough, treading on the toes of local stringers like Harry. But Jarvis and the rest of the cast have to fight with a script that wobbles alarmingly. A running joke about a plump female reporter's troubled bowels is about as unfunny as comedy gets. There's a great satire to be made deconstructing the foibles of the news machine. Sadly, this isn't it.