Jonathan Wright

Granted, the recent debacle over employing security guards trumps fiction, but it's still sad to bid farewell to Twenty Twelve. That's principally because it's a comedy that brilliantly skewers both group-think idiocy and the personal rivalries inherent to all organisations. In the final episode, there are 10 days left until the Live Team takes over from the Deliverance crew, time enough for a difficult meeting with Danny Boyle's bruising fixer, Kevin Thingie, a competition to compose an Olympian peal of church bells and for the ever-elusive Seb Coe to be "called away to a last-minute argument".

In an offering with a whiff of mid-season drift about it, the (mis)adventures of the team behind Pucks! continue. For Carol, this means being assertive and insisting that Merc marks the fifth anniversary of the couple's affair. A weekend away beckons, good news for Merc's wife Jamie as she and ]p]Matt LeBlanc] plan "48 hours of the dirty stuff". Elsewhere, Sean's Facebook ineptitude brings Matt's stalker, the improbably named Labia, back into the actor's orbit.

"It's like dealing with cave people," says an exasperated Matt LeBlanc. The reason for his ire? Muffins. More specifically, the complete inability of Sean and Beverly to negotiate the complexities of Hollywood-style death and catering etiquette when network chief Merc's father breathes his last. Episodes is a series that's at its best when it's most excruciating. Witness the funeral scene when Merc shares memories of his dad with Pucks! star Morning Randolph: "Didn't he grab your ass?" "He was so full of life."

The transatlantic sitcom of Brit writers transposed to LA returns. It's four months since Beverley (Tamsin Greig) slept with Matt LeBlanc, and she's now separated from husband and co-writer Sean (Stephen Mangan). Meantime, with their comedy Pucks! about to debut on US TV (sample review from the critics: "Pucks! sucks"), all three have to work together. If the first series was uneven, there's plenty to suggest its successor will be more consistent.

To celebrate its 45th anniversary, the Radio 4panel show returns to TV for the first time since the 1990s. The hiatus is not surprising: the format of four competitors getting 60 seconds to speak on a subject "without repetition, hesitation or deviation" is hardly visual. Or so you might imagine. The first episode, which finds host Nicholas Parsons overseeing Paul Merton, Sue Perkins, Graham Norton and Phill Jupitus, reveals much about the panellists you might otherwise miss, notably Jupitus's genuine frustration at his own inability to avoid repetition.

Expelled from university 20 years ago, Gently returns to Cambridge "in triumph" to become a security consultant for his former mentor, Prof Jericho (Bill Paterson). The triumph is shortlived as the detective and sidekick are charged with guarding a valuable robot, which promptly goes missing. Worse, a death follows and the two men attract the attention of the law. Better than last week's opener, it adds a hint of darkness and an unlikely love story to the series staples of outrageous coincidence, Gently behaving appallingly and plain silliness.

Following a well-received pilot, Stephen Mangan returns as Douglas Adams's holistic detective. The first of three new adventures finds Gently and sidekick Macduff (Darren Boyd) probing the death of a computer whiz who thought the Pentagon was after him, and taking on a client convinced his horoscopes are coming true. At times it's rather dizzying as the script from series creator Howard Overman (Misfits) skedaddles along, but best just to admire the skill and mad energy of it all.

"Any chance of a festive blow job?" inquires a tired Adam as he gets home from attending to his flock. Not really, what with Alex's grump-faced, "social hand grenade" of a dad, Martin (Geoffrey Palmer), having unexpectedly turned up to spend Christmas with the couple. If that weren't bad enough, Adam's diary is packed, necessitating 5.30am starts every day. The pressure will surely tell, especially with midnight mass, treated by booze-sodden parishioners as "the religious equivalent of a kebab", approaching. A Christmas episode that's genuinely heartwarming rather than toe-curlingly sentimental.

If you've ever failed to work out the precise purpose of QI, it may help to think of it as in some respects a kind of televisual equivalent of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. The show's very pointlessness, unless you're someone with ambitions to bore for Britain on arcane knowledge, is a great part of its charm. Anyway, this year's Christmas episode finds Stephen Fry posing questions on the theme of ice to Brian Blessed, Sean Lock, Ross Noble and Alan Davies.

Having offered up an episode largely focused on Mick the local crack addict and rubbish conman last week, tonight's offering puts pedantic, pursed-lipped Nigel at the centre of events. Beautifully played by Miles Jupp, the lay preacher is a smarmy bureaucrat, always brown-nosing to Archdeacon Robert when the opportunity arises. Secretly, Nigel has long thought he might be a better priest than Adam. How will he fare when an opportunity to prove this arises? Meantime in an ambition-themed episode, Robert dreams of career advancement.