Jon Stewart

UK's John Oliver to host The Daily Show for eight weeks

British comedian John Oliver is to take over as host of American satirical comedy The Daily Show while regular host Jon Stewart is away directing his first feature film.

Brand new US show for Russell Brand

Russell Brand has landed a topical US comedy show which will see him competing with legendary Daily Show host Jon Stewart.

The Amnesty International benefit show returns after a four-year hiatus with a transatlanic special, taking place for the first time in New York at the Radio City Music Hall. Recorded on Sunday, the show celebrates the charity's 50th anniversary with a stellar comedy line-up including Russell Brand, Ben Stiller, Eddie Izzard, Sarah Silverman, Jack Whitehall, Jon Stewart and The Muppets. There's music, too, from Mumford & Sons and Coldplay, whose frontman, Chris Martin, announces onstage: "We take pleasure in being the least funny act here."

Amnesty brings its comedy fundraiser to the US for the first time to celebrate the organisation's 50th birthday. The line-up is an Atlantic-straddling bobby dazzler at New York's Radio City Music Hall: the US contingent includes Jon Stewart, Sarah Silverman and Kristen Wiig, and the UK sends Peter Serafinowicz, Noel Fielding and Russell Brand. Music comes from Coldplay and Mumford & Sons. The ball always comes off best when it's a combination of standup and sketch comedy, so fingers crossed for some surprise team-ups.

Video: Jack Whitehall on US Secret Policeman's Ball gig

Comedian Jack Whitehall has just returned to the UK after performing at The Secret Policeman's Ball gala in New York; the first time it has been held outside the UK.

He performed alongside Russell Brand, Eddie Izzard, David Walliams, Jon Stewart and Ben Stiller for the Amnesty International benefit.

While speaking to the BBC's Charlie Stayt and Susanna Reid about the US gig he decided to investigate the BBC Breakfast programme's set.

Despite ratings plummeting during the first series, this satirical show has been given a second go. It's a talented team - including Jimmy Carr riffing on news, Charlie Brooker ranting on hypocrisy and David Mitchell ruminating on the personalities within. Lessons have evidently been learnt from the less than overwhelming feedback from series one - hopefully the shorter running time will create a snappier format - but it could be some time yet before this hits the US heights of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

John Oliver: A very funny Englishman in New York

John Oliver interprets Britain's quaint ways for the US audience of The Daily Show. He explains how he gave host Jon Stewart a 'schadenfreudegasm' when the pair discussed a certain newspaper scandal.

Sir David Frost, sometimes dubbed "the godfather of satire", talks about the impact of this particular type of humour on politics in the UK and the US. Using clips from That Was the Week that Was and America's Saturday Night Live, Frost shows how the genre has changed and garners the opinions of satire veterans such as Jon Stewart, Ian Hislop and Rory Bremner.

Charlie Brooker's Newswipe, and Brooker's sudden, dramatic appearance in a neck brace last week, explained the end-of-series chaos, with a 'best of' running last week, and the last 'new' episode finally running this week - presumably around outpatient appointments and physiotherapy.

Newswipe has, after an oddly muted start, been like a shotgun in a field of crows - more adept at countering the 21st-century media slide into goonery, retardation and witchcraft than almost anything available, including Jeremy Paxman's sneer.

Newswipe's great gift has been to dispel the idea that current affairs is so huge, complex and about Israel that we can never hope to get a handle on it - something that even Brooker himself seemed to believe, despairingly, at the start of the series. Instead, it gently illuminated the fact that simply thinking about what you've watched, and then asking yourself what your true opinion of it is, is more than half the battle.

The other half is, of course, laughing at Newswipe, and then writing down all of Brooker's elegant, angry perspicuity in a jotter marked "Good points well made". The News, Brooker pointed out, used to be a factual programme, to which we would then have an emotional response. But, since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, this has become reversed: the news has taken to first asking us for our emotional opinion, then covering it as a "factual" event - as with Baby P "public outrage", Jade Goody "public sorrow", etc.

And that's if there are any "facts" at all: in the following show, Brooker furiously flicked between footage of bleeding Thai protesters, and then viewers' pictures of snowmen from the recent Big Snow, while shouting "News! Not news! News! Not news!", like Matthew Broderick shouting "Learn! Learn!" at the rampaging supercomputer WOPR in War Games.

Brooker is the nearest this country has to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the US programme that has single-handedly dragged the collective American IQ up ten points since the start of the recession. It's neither here nor there if Brooker's in a neck-brace and unable to put on his own trousers without help from a nurse. We just need him to crack on with another series.

Ever wondered why we don't have a British Daily Show? Our own Jon Stewart to take on the media and Jon Snow's ties? Well that's roughly the idea behind Charlie Brooker's new show - Newswipe. A spin-off of his Screenwipe series, it aims to provide "a fun snarky weekly digest that will help keep you and hopefully me on top of the news soap opera".

As eagle-eyed readers will have spotted, it's weekly - and therefore unlikely to reach the "alternative news" status The Daily Show holds. It also lacks the US show's fast turnaround - in the opening episode we get gags about the Fritzl case, the Pope, and the school shootings in Germany - but nothing about the coverage of Jade Goody.

It's good, funny in patches, and worth watching. Too often, perhaps, Brooker points out the obvious (guess what? The media focuses on bad news!), but it's at its best when cutting between quotes to highlight media hypocrisy (something The Daily Show is particularly expert at).

A bit more of that, and a bit less directionless Brooker bellowing, and we might have a contender.