Justin Edwards

This improvised show promises to leave viewers gasping like Gillian McKeith facing a bucket of maggots.

Created by veteran producer Dan Paterson, it sounds like his Whose Line Is It Anyway? for a new generation no bad thing.

Comedy talent, including Laura Solon, Justin Edwards, Marek Larwood, Pippa Evans, Humphrey Ker, David Armand and Greg Davies, will be pitting their wits in a series of games spoofing films, TV programmes and music.

Host Hugh Dennis says: "We have electronic trickery, animated chickens, songs and games including a fantastic sideways scene. It's half an hour of controlled improvised silliness and there is no scoring and no stars."

Affable comedian Rob Brydon (The Trip, Gavin & Stacey) asks cranky colleagues Jo Brand and Jack Dee to spread festive cheer on this light-hearted entertainment show. The two guests play up to their bah-humbug personas, with Brand suggesting an unusual way to get rid of unwanted relatives. Sozzled children's entertainer Jeremy Lion (Justin Edwards) offers a hilarious, wine-fuelled take on The Twelve Days of Christmas. And gothic rocker Alice Cooper shares the sofa with charismatic baritone Bryn Terfel.

Fans of Armando Iannucci's already classic The Thick Of It will be familiar with the comic work of Justin Edwards, thanks to his role as gormless wannabe-Machiavelli "Blinky" Ben Swain. But his solo shows in the guise of dipsomaniac children's "entertainer" Jeremy Lion are an altogether different (if no less hilarious) proposition. Red-faced, belching and swigging from cans of Special Brew, Lion is a majestically larger-than-life grotesque. When Edwards last brought this character to the fringe in 2005 he walked away with a Perrier nomination and, on the strength of his latest show, you wouldn't bet against him receiving similar recognition this time. The brand-new eco-themed spectacular sees Lion and pianist Hilary Cox (AKA comic Gus Brown) in a "play" about the dangers of an environmentally unfriendly lifestyle. This is big, vivid and brilliant comedy, with set pieces that could see you feeling incapacitated with laughter.

This should become the official 'revenge of the nerds' comedy. Written by and starring Ben Willbond and Justin Edwards, this is a tale of two men caught in a perpetual adolescence - one a frustrated hetrosexual, the other a frustrated homosexual.

The fact they are teachers at a sixth-form college permits them to continue living in a flashback episode of Men Behaving Badly set in a school. The comedy is character-driven first, situation second, plot third, but it definitely works.

Even with Jonathan Ross as a three hour warm-up man, Buy Me Up TV failed to coax the glimmer of a smile on to my face.

The talents of Doon Mackichan couldn't rescue Justin Edwards' and James Eldred's account of life behind the scenes at a 24-hour shopping channel.

Perhaps, judging that this setting has been the subject of numerous satires, the authors settled for a frenzied facsimile of life at the consumerist cutting edge. Everyone sounded barking, indeed on the verge of a nervous breakdown, perhaps because they had to cope with dialogue that could apparently only be delivered at ear-shattering volume. The audience laughter was strangely disturbing, as if they had been force fed E numbers before being manacled to their seats.

Buy Me Up TV, a new sitcom starring and co-written by Justin Edwards, faces a real comedic hurdle. The world it portrays, in this work-based comedy, is that of the cheaper end of the shopping channels. The problem is, those channels are funny enough: crass and camp, and full of phrases you can't quite believe you just heard.

When this sitcom focuses on the selling, it does match the real thing for laughs. There's the ludicrousness of the products - a chicken de-boner which 'uses centrifuge'; a knife reputed to be 'so powerful it can turn into a fine mist', and 'Robert Mugabe beach towels' - and the sales team's banal, empty phrases (they are quite literally amazing). Off camera, though, it's a patchier affair, in places somewhat hysterical - as opposed to hysterically funny - and all a bit overexcited. There are nods to Larry Sanders, hints of Alan Partridge and faint echoes of Curb Your Enthusiasm. These are not bad precedents, but what this lively new sitcom needs to sell is an identity all of its own.