Keith Watson

The school-based sitcom playground is getting pretty crowded, with the bell just rung on Big School and Jack Whitehall's Bad Education still running around dropping its shorts at anyone who's interested. But for my money the pick of the Class of 2013 is Some Girls (BBC3), which scores one vital A* over the opposition: it looks as though it's set in a school that might actually exist.

On the face of it, the group of south London bffs at the heart of Some Girls is painfully PC: one sorted black girl, one ditzy white blonde, one brainy Asian and one baby Kathy Burke. So it's full credit to the spark in the writing of Bernadette Davies and a set of confident performances from the four leads that this formula adds up to more than the sum of its parts. It works.

Led from the front by Adelayo Adedayo as Viva, who was facing down the tricky issue of dumping a fit boyfriend who was too thick for her, last night's episode centred on the sudden death of a science teacher - cue the arrival of Broadchurch's Jonathan Bailey as unashamed lust object - and the fallout therein.

It was all dealt with delightfully distastefully, as voiced by the straight-talking Aussie gym teacher/resident hard-faced bitch: 'We'll provide a counsellor - if you can't talk it over with your mates like a normal person.'

With sketches featuring Riverdance and James Blunt, new sketch show The Ginge, The Geordie And The Geek (BBC Two) was scarcely straining to be intensely topical satire.

And what a blessed relief that was: here was a sketch trio more concerned with getting its jokes right rather than flaunting its cleverness or political correctness in our faces.

There were misses as well as hits but, with their gangster gulls and amorous ventriloquists, Paul Charlton, Kevin O'Loughlin and Graeme Rooney hit the mark, a dash of surreal imagination added to what is, at heart, traditionally crafted comedy.

They like running about in their underpants, which was vaguely mystifying, and a sketch about cracking the female mind code came off as lame. But a couple of dance numbers were inspired. Watch the last three minutes of episode one and if you don't laugh, you're probably dead.

James Corden on the right track with The Wrongs Man

Comic duos are built on sharp contrasts and Corden and Baynton have got them all going on: fat and thin, optimist and pessimist, extrovert and introvert. It's a winning combination of clashes and, though the first episode of The Wrong Mans has to work overtime to set up its elaborate plot and characters, it fulfilled the essential law of opening episodes: it left me wanting more. In fact, the one thing working against The Wrong Mans is its length.

Jason Byrne is an accomplished stand-up comedian, an expert in working a crowd and making them feel as if they are the stars of the show. All of which made his sitcom debut in Father Figure (BBC1) something of a mystifying misfire.

As if nicking your title off one of George Michael's best songs wasn't bad enough, Father Figure managed to commit every sitcom cliché crime in the book: dopey bloke, interfering mother, long-suffering wife, victim neighbours, bonkers relatives. All of it wrapped up in an unsavoury mess of vomit and poo 'jokes'.

It's an unholy marriage of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em and Mrs Brown's Boys, with Byrne as an Irish spin on Frank Spencer, a hapless idiot to whom disasters naturally occur - most of which involve spraying anyone who ventures across his path with everything from baked beans to chocolate mousse.

Byrne brings a certain haphazard charm to the part, but his material is pretty puerile. Still, if you find a child running around screaming 'I'm a human poo!' the height of hilarity - and the canned laughter soundtrack was having fits - then this is the show for you.

As is the 1970s, where a man protecting his genitals with the line 'You'll crush me Curly Wurlys!' would, at least, have been vaguely contemporary.

The trouble with Mount Pleasant (Sky Living) is that it's exactly that: pleasant. This curious hybrid of soap opera and sitcom - the entire cast consists of that's so-and-so from so-and-so - is into its third series but I'm blowed if I can put my finger on what it's about, other than a bunch of not-that-interesting people who live, physically and emotionally, in a Northern cul-de-sac.

Main character Lisa (Sally Lindsay, reprising her turn as barmaid Shelley in Corrie) spends most of her time talking hubby Dan out of trying to get her pregnant and, in turn, his entire purpose seems to be whipping the duvet down and demanding 'get in, now!' She usually doesn't.

At least there's a story there, a couple at odds with what they want out of their relationship and failing to talk about it. Everyone else seems to exist in a drama-free void, conversations entirely based on who they used to be with/who they're with now/who they want to be with. This isn't drama, it's more like a gossip down the bus stop.

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It's been a rum little monkey, Family Tree (BBC Two), full of bad jokes and oddball characters.

But, as Chris O'Dowd's Tom Chadwick dithered over his future in a 'there must be a series two'-type cliffhanger, there was a surprising melancholy to waving farewell to this curious bunch at the airport.

The satire on the whole Who Do You Think You Are? TV franchise was a tad overcooked - surprisingly so, given the pedigree of writer/director Christopher Guest - but there was just enough wit scattered among the branches of Tom's extended clan to make up for the feeling that no family could contain this many nutters.

'Do you find that being around books makes you more clever?' Tom asked potential squeeze Ally. 'No, it makes me feel like all the ideas have been written already,' she replied. They were made for each other.

And Fred Willard's Al Chadwick had a camp hoot with a stream of bad gay jokes. 'How do you fit four gay men on one bar stool?... turn it upside down!' So wrong.

It's a rare thing but the pleasure of Doc Martin (ITV) is in the minor characters, the pepperings of humanity who surround Martin Clunes's borderline sociopathic central figure.

This made the opening episode of the current series rather tough going, as much of it was spent with just the Doc and his new bride, Louisa, traipsing about the woods in their wedding finery - a shotgun-toting spin on the old nightmare honeymoon night chestnut.

Obviously, Doc Martin is a fantasy show - it seems remarkably easy to get an appointment with the Portwenn GP - but it goes off the rails when it strays from its quirky community beat. Many shows get that horribly wrong, with all the supporting characters reduced to caricatures, but Doc Martin has created a credible TV community and it's a shame when it wastes them.

The idea last night was to pack some emotional muscle into Doc Martin and Louisa's oddball romance but it came across as laboured farce. It was back with babysitting Ruth (an underused Eileen Atkins), PC Penhale and a comedy power cut that Doc Martin got its old familiar glow back.

If Bad Education was a child, it would be one of those bright but infuriating kids with ADHD who fly around the room never quite settling at anything. One whose moments of brilliance are punctuated by tiring bouts of 'look at me, look at me' daftness.

At least Jack Whitehall's comedy - debuting on BBC iPlayer - feels like it's taking place in the 21st century unlike David Walliams and his oddly dated Big School. Whitehall's hopeless goon of a teacher, Alfie Wickers, one of those types who wants to be mates with the kids rather than, you know, actually teaching them anything, feels absolutely in tune with the way education is going.

And, in-between descending into cringe-making farce, Whitehall mines comedy gold from potshots at Mumford & Sons ('you're too young to appreciate a good dinner-party anthem when you hear one') and his ill-fated efforts at convincing colleague Miss Gulliver of his boyish charms. Efforts not entirely dissuaded by her admission that she bats for the other team.

'I am angry and aroused and upset,' was his reaction to her sudden conversion to lesbianism. 'But mostly aroused.' When he's dishing out the banter, Whitehall is a sharp writer. But a lot of Bad Education flails around in the shallow end of physical comedy, with extended sequences at a swimming gala failing to make much of a splash.

That said, it did allow the somewhat niche delight of watching Mathew Horne's head (teacher) attempting to break in a pair of Speedos and Whitehall streaking around the corridors, blinded by a horror-movie spin on a chlorine allergy that made him look like a Doctor Who alien. It was high on energy but low on subtlety, driven by the false assumption that physical freakiness is so funny it requires no other target.

Whitehall should ditch the slapstick and stick to the staff and classroom sniping. Because when he does it's A*. Otherwise, it's an epic fail.

In 50 years from now, will some young comic be picking through Whitehall's career to proclaim him their hero? Unlikely.

But that was the deal with My Hero: Ben Miller On Tony Hancock (BBC1), in which Alexander Armstrong's ex sidekick paid tribute to the man who inspired him to pursue a career in comedy.

Hancock's 'cuddly, ineffectual misery' tickled Miller, who was filmed here chortling away at one of Hancock's old scripts.

Miller offered an affectionate portrait of Hancock's ultimately sad story, charting the great man's career from early stage fright, through dry-retching before filming a sketch to later performances fuelled by booze and autocues. As an advert forgetting into comedy, it was a pretty powerful deterrent.

Hancock committed suicide aged just 44, blighted by the eternal curse of the failing funny man. As Miller said: 'There was part of him that doesn't find anything... enough.'