Katherine Parkinson

Sci-fi fans rejoice! The sitcom success story of 2012 returns with Eddie Robson once again at the controls of this eccentric flying-saucer comedy.

Katrina Lyons may still be trapped in the sleepy rural village of Cresden Green, but The IT Crowd's Katherine Parkinson has managed to flee her extra-terrestrial captors, replaced by the equally charming Hattie Morahan (Outnumbered).

Little else is changed from the pilot; our protagonist remains frustrated by her neighbours' endless dithering in the face of alien invasion, but could salvation arrive in the form of a message to the outside world?

In the wake of his contributions to That Mitchell and Webb Sound, Robson has not only crafted a sharp satire but also inspired a new generation of writers to pen their ideas for radio.

Neil (Frank Skinner) and Kim (Katherine Parkinson, The IT Crowd) are back and their verbal jousting is more combative than ever. This couple of bookworms have no children to interrupt their thought processes and so have plenty of time to flash their razor-sharp rapiers of verbal brilliance until there's only one man - or woman - left standing.

As ever, the trigger for a tiff can be as harmless as a nursery rhyme: who'd have thought that Jack Sprat's decision to eat no fat made his wife a repressed woman? The spat that starts with the Sprats ends on a bonding note, where both Neil and Kim agree that singing songs while strumming an acoustic guitar results in painful squirming among one's associates and should always be avoided. The intellectual face-offs might still be full-blown, but now there's an inkling of the love and mutual respect that holds this odd couple together.

Katherine Parkinson (Mrs Pooter in Radio 4's new Classic Serial, wonderful in Channel 4's The IT Crowd) and Julian Rhind-Tutt (total star, even as the guest on Radio 3's Essential Classics) head a brilliant cast (Jan Francis, Peter Davison, Dave Lamb, Don Gilet) in this new comedy by Eddie Robson. It's about an English village, invaded for study purposes by aliens, the Geonin, who throw a heat cordon around it to stop anyone coming in or getting out. They'll soon learn about the Earthling inborn tendency to resistance.

The enjoyably affectionate Dickensian sitcom comes to an end tonight, and let's hope it's not the last we see of Robert Webb's good-natured Jedrington Secret-Past. Here Jedrington is brought back to sobriety by Servegood and reunited with his wife Conceptiva (Katherine Parkinson). And together they take the evil Harmswell Grimstone (Tim McInnerny) to court to demand the return of the business and their daughter.

Behind those stick-on whiskers, Robert Webb's innocent, ­dim-witted face has got "gullible sucker" written all over it.

And, as the Dickensian spoof returns, Bleak Old Shop proprietor Jedrington Secret-Past and his family are about to be catapulted into a world of untold wealth thanks to a business opportunity that sounds almost too good to be true.

While last year's Christmas special was full of lots of soft, wordy humour that showed off its radio roots, the first of this ­new BBC2 three-parter takes a more ­straightforward route to the viewers' funny bone.

And if you don't laugh at The Apprentice and Tesco gags then there's really ­something wrong with you. Katherine Parkinson is wonderful as Jedrington's wife Conceptiva, who is being taunted (Lady Dedlock-style) about her very own secret past.

Her insistence on doing everything without any help from her new servants is a lovely detail, while Waterloo Road's Sarah Hadland pops up, quite literally tonight, as a very different kind of teacher to what we've seen before.

This sitcom may represent the height of ­silliness, but it's also very clever.

Robert Webb and Katherine Parkinson return for three new episodes of the rip-snorting historical romp that puts a banger up Dickens. Now over his festive difficulties at debtors' prison, Jedrington Secret-Past (Webb) begins a joint business venture with the innocuously named Harmswell Grimstone (Tim McInnerny) and Jedrington's wife Conceptiva (Parkinson) receives a distressing letter which threatens to send her even barmier than that treacle addiction. It's demented, gag-jammed fun. Above all, this shop sells that most old-fashioned of commodities - proper jokes.

This Dickens spoof revolving around Jedrington - Robert Webb's upright Victorian shopkeeper - first aired as a one-off seasonal indulgence at Christmas. But now - with a plot that sees Jedrington involved with an evil business man as his wife Conceptiva (Katherine Parkinson) struggles to face up to her 'Secret Past' extended over three episodes - it feels drawn out. You sense the series makers straining for some of Blackadder's period irreverence (Tim McInnerny is on hand in support), but the results are like an overlong sketch from That Mitchell And Webb Look or, even worse, a Footlights show, circa 1984. A few good gags aside - such as the Oxford Emotional Dictionary that Jedrington consults to decipher his wife's womanly whims - there's only so many times you can laugh at these quaint Victorians.

It's odd for a new sitcom to start with a Christmas special, but The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff has. Clearly the BBC has faith in it.

Perhaps that isn't surprising. Being based on the popular Radio 4 Dickensian sitcom Bleak Expectations is already a good enough start. Throw in a cast of, amongst others, Mitchell and Webb, Stephen Fry, Katherine Parkinson and Pauline McLynn into the mix then you should end up with a wonderful piece of work.

Robert Webb plays Jedrington Secret-Past, the owner of The Old Shop of Stuff, London's leading retailer of miscellaneous odd things. The special revolves around his attempts to pay off a certain debt he owes to evil solicitor Malifax Skulkingworm (Fry) before London's three great alliterative bells (Big Ben, Massive Morris and Tiny Terry) ring in Christmas Day.

Anyone familiar with Bleak Expectations will know the sort of humour to expect. It's silly and unashamed of it. This is the only show to feature such things as a bird known as the tinsel tit, Santa Claus on a crucifix, The A to D of London and a man being arrested for crying. Some critics may think that this programme is too silly, but I say sometimes you need something silly to lift up your spirits.

My only problem with this show is that I'm somewhat perplexed by the fact that they didn't just simply adapt the original Bleak Expectations for television, rather than create a brand new project. Yes, I like Jedrington Secret-Past and Malifax Skulkingworm, but I like Sir Philip 'Pip' Bin and Mr. Gently Benevolent too. I'd love to see them appear on screen some time...

Looking a little like that Blackadder Christmas special set in Dickensian London, except with CGI backgrounds and ludicrous special effects, The Bleak Old Shop Of Stuff was a very odd thing. After no time at all you'd already been whacked with multiple gags - at an estimated rate of one throwaway line per demi-minute - to the point they were coming at you so fast, there was no time to discern whether or not a statue of the Duke of Wellington carved from pineapple or a 'jam spaniel' were funny or not. The hit rate was far from perfect, but with such a rampant flurry of wilful stupidity, it was hard to feel cheated.

The story, which ultimately rambled into near-incoherence, saw Robert Webb as Jedrington Secret-Past (silly names were par for the course), pitted against Stephen Fry's evil lawyer, Malifax Skulkingworm, effectively a Melchett-esque villain who was out to bankrupt him over a debt his grandfather had worked up in the distant past. Katherine Parkinson put in a decent turn as Jedrington's treacle-addicted wife, and there were also cameos from the likes of David Mitchell as a workhouse owner who inexplicably inflated every time he got excited. And Johnny Vegas showed up for no real reason too.

This was written and crafted by the people behind Radio 4's Bleak Expectations, and that radio link was clear to see. This was obviously a transfer of sorts, with the kind of script that would work perfectly on radio, with all those strange descriptions of things like 'treacle-fiends' and Big Ben's cousin, 'Tiny Terry' firing the imagination with their idiotic simplicity. Transferring such silliness to the small screen was always likely to be a risk, but despite The Bleak Shop of Stuff possibly sitting on just the wrong side of silly, it still managed to raise a few chuckles. Those who revel in silliness pushed to its absolute limits will doubtless find themselves in seventh heaven.