Jonathan Wright

"Don't say Jesus!" commands archdeacon Robert, but it's too late, because Adam is in one of his what's-my-vocation-all-about weeks. His conclusion? That it's about helping Mick to stay clean until the crack addict gets into a hostel. Accordingly, Adam has a house guest, much to the annoyance of Alex, who would rather her husband focused on having sex so that she might get pregnant. Via a plotline involving an alcoholic City banker (Richard E Grant) and a hole in the church accounts, this is an episode that makes some barbed points about snobbery, and who gets help in our society and why.

Forget Ofsted, it's the church school religious inspection that worries Adam (Tom Hollander). Fail this and Archdeacon Robert won't be happy. Not that Ellie's concerned, with new teacher Feld (or "twatty Matty man" in Adam's jealous estimation) inspiring the kids. But there's a problem: Feld's on the side of Dawkins, not the angels. Meantime, Adam enters a team in an inter-faith football tournament. Shame it includes Nigel in goal. Adam: "Man up, put your sports face on or we're going to get humiliated!" The best sitcom on TV - as tonight proves, it never settles for easy laughs.

Dreaming of being a mother, Alex gets a chance to try out her parenting skills when a friend's daughter, Enid, comes to stay. She's not a charming child: "Shut up, I hate you!" It's all made worse by the fact that London is in the grip of a heatwave and an exhausted Adam is suffering with nightmares. With a storyline involving an elderly parishioner (Sylvia Syms) who's convinced her nursing home bedroom is haunted, an episode that has fun with the more eldritch currents of parish life.

With day-to-day church life now including Colin taking potshots at "squirrels on crack", it's clear St Saviour's needs new inspiration. Thank heavens, then, for energetic, enthusiastic, clever Abi Johnston, who wants to sample inner-city life. All in the parish is sweetness and light, except Adam is jealous of his able, popular apprentice. He also accidentally samples MDMA ("I'm off my tits, Lord"), but luckily Colin knows how to deal with comedown blues: "Best off drinking through it."

At an apposite moment considering events at St Paul's, the sitcom about inner-city parish life returns. In the first episode, we catch up with the Reverend Adam Smallbone on retreat and contemplating such spiritual matters as whether "that strange cauliflower cheese" is on the lunch menu again. Still, excitement is nigh as Adam is mistakenly hailed as a have-a-go hero when he accidentally thwarts a mugging. A beautifully observed comedy that's by turns warm and acerbic.

Jon Culshaw and Debra Stephenson offer up another 30 minutes of pretending to be other people. When the show hits home, as in a MasterChef skit where John Torode and Gregg Wallace reckon the contestants are "like cows at an abattoir", there's much fun to be had. Paul McCartney reforming the Fab Four with "all of the surviving Beatles except Ringo" and the Gok Wan wok gun also hit the mark. At other times, though, don't be surprised if your attention drifts: the show is consistently inventive without necessarily being consistently funny.

He may have given up his psychosis to spend more time with the family, but Gregor Fisher's ageing rapscallion Rab is still capable of creating considerable mayhem. Tonight, that means being at the centre of a siege when Mary kidnaps the minister of work, Chingford Steel (Richard E Grant). Funny, but don't expect subtlety, especially when Rab goes to the doctor because he's worried about his prostate: "There could be pie suppers lodged up there from the summer of love."

For once, an eerie calm descends on the Brockman household as all three sprogs are out of the house at the same time. Suddenly, Pete and Sue get a glimpse of an empty nest life as they try to remember what they did before child rearing took over their lives. Pete: "We used to have sex in the afternoon." Sue: "Did we?" Meantime, Jake is hiding something (at least in Sue's estimation), Ben causes mayhem at adventure camp, and Karen is seriously impressed by a friend's abode: "It's much bigger than our house. And much cleaner." Expect Labrador-driven mayhem, too.

The show that's given family sitcoms a good name returns for a fourth series. Tonight's plot centres on a family funeral and Pete losing his teaching job after resigning on a point of principle. Not that any ongoing story is necessarily what keeps you watching here. No, it's the details that make you squirm in recognition, as when Pete's mother ("I lack the warmth thing") suddenly remembers one of her klutzy son's childhood nicknames: "Cack hands!"

In a comedy based on Douglas Adams's novels, Stephen Mangan stars as detective Dirk Gently, whose investigative technique is based on "an unswerving belief in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things". Happily, the switchback script here, by Howard Overman (Misfits), has a kind of pointedly whimsical quality that's pure Adams. Although there are moments when Mangan's energy overwhelms the rest of the cast, you suspect Gently's creator would approve.