Keith Watson

Vicious (ITV) exited as it entered, a high-camp frolic with Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi hamming it up like there was no tomorrow. The unapologetic portrayal of old-school gayness got up noses in some quarters, cited as evidence that TV has still not embraced sexual equality. Queerly, to me, it felt like the exact opposite.

The existence of Vicious seemed to suggest that TV was comfortable enough in its own skin to not give two figs about only showing a politically correct approved version of gay lifestyles.

Freddie and Stuart were riotous throwbacks, bitchy old queens from another era, but in between the barbs and the one-liners, these were recognisable characters. To deny their existence would surely be the politically incorrect thing.

Taken on its own level as a tribute to the old tradition of West End farce, McKellen and Jacobi's Vicious was worth a cheap laugh, an added treat being the presence of Marcia Warren and Frances de la Tour, who really should have a show of their own. And how refreshing to have a man in his seventies tell his mother-in-law: 'You're old, you're eating buttons.' Now that's anti-ageism.

'The thought of Les Dawson coming back as a hologram fries my tiny mind,' was probably the weirdest sentence I heard on TV all weekend. It arrived courtesy of Russell Kane, standing in as a rented talking head on Les Dawson - An Audience With That Never Was (ITV).

I had to check that this wasn't one of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror futuristic dramas because there, on the screen, was the hologrammed Dawson cracking gags as if he was still alive - he died 20 years ago at the age of 62 - while the camera kept cutting, in time-honoured Audience style, to chortling minor celebs in the present day. Debbie McGee, Lorraine Chase, you get the drift.

It was deeply odd. Dawson had been two weeks away from filming his Audience show when he died and this was a well-intentioned way of paying tribute to an old-school comedy great.

But the long-shot hologram sequences of Dawson in action felt uneasily like you were watching him cracking jokes at his own funeral. The Q&A was a belter, mind.

Step up Psychobitches (Sky Arts 1), which started out as a pilot last year but has now deservedly bloomed into a full series.

The set-up is simple. Rebecca Front, understandably striking while her iron is hot, plays psychiatrist to a succession of celebrity patients - of a decidedly retro vintage - which is basically an excuse for a host of top comic talent to show off in a series of over-the-top impressions.

In the space of 25 minutes or so, everyone from the Brontë Sisters to Margot Fonteyn by way of Nina Simone had a go at hogging the ego-crazed spotlight.

The quality control is variable but when Psychobitches is good, it's very, very good, with Samantha Spiro, a world away from her mousy turn in Grandma's House, absolutely fabulous as an infuriatingly kooky Audrey Hepburn.

Even better was Julia Davis turning chirpy Pam Ayres and tormented Sylvia Plath into a poetic double act, chipper rhymes morphing into angst-ridden soul-searching in the blink of a couplet. Delightfully bonkers.

So where would Jessica Hynes go after her brilliant turn as the spectacularly ghastly PR Siobhan in Twenty Twelve?

The answer, rather surprisingly, is back in time, donning the high collars and sturdy skirts of suburban wife Margaret - a pillar of the Banbury Intricate Craft Circle - in Up The Women (BBC4).

Except that Margaret has seen the light, a brush with suffragettes in London has opened her eyes to the Votes For Women cause. Now Margaret is determined to spread the word to her fellow stitching ladies.

However, in her way stands the indomitable Helen, a woman who likes the world just the way it is - because she's in charge - and who squashes the intellectually frustrated Margaret flat, telling her: 'I know it's hard for you to accept that you've read all those books for nothing.'

This could all come across as a quaint timepiece but Hynes, who writes as well as stars, cleverly draws parallels between life now and life a century ago, without hammering the point home.

Women still have a hard time being valued on intellect alone, just as they did in Edwardian times. Margaret is a woman for all ages.

Buoyed by some fine performances - Hynes and Rebecca Front locked in psychological battle as Margaret and Helen, Vicki Pepperdine brilliant (as ever) as a cake-baking frump, Judy Parfitt squeezing every last drop of libido out of a lusty granny - Up The Women is a comedy that sneaks up on you, ambushing with sly wit rather than attacking with laugh-out-loud gags.

It's not the finished article and this is just a tester three-part run.

But I'd vote for any comedy that has Margaret explaining why she hasn't told her husband about her new-found militancy thus: 'He's been very melancholic since Nietzsche's death - I thought it might tip him over the edge.' Beyond good and evil, rock on.

The touching and inventively told tale of reluctant young tranny Gary (Tom Brooke), struggling to find his place in life, would make a cracking double bill with the Bean and Graham drama.

Using the potentially irksome but actually rather effective device of providing Gary with an alter ego called Frank, a conduit for all the fear and loathing sloshing around in his system, worked a treat. Stripped of his outer mask, we saw the real Gary - and how difficult we can find it to be ourselves.

The Job Lot (ITV) is one of those comedies I want to make me bellylaugh because of the people in it but I'm not really getting beyond the odd wry smirk.

Despite boasting a great cast - Russell Tovey from Him & Her (and much besides), Miranda's Sarah Hadland and Adeel Akhtar from Utopia - squeezing amusement out of the daily grind of life in a job centre is proving an uphill struggle.

The problem partly stems from the feeling that the characters haven't got anywhere to go. Tovey's desk monkey Karl is the equivalent of Martin Freeman's Tim in The Office, both stuck in dead-end jobs and not quite sure how they got there, both niggled by the idea they're worth something better. But with Tim you could envision a life beyond; Karl ceases to exist the moment he steps outside the door.

It's that lack of credibility that makes The Job Lot just a journeyman old-school sitcom, cranking the odd easy laugh out of secret websites and unwipeable whiteboards - drawings of bottoms always crack a smile - but the lack of ambition makes it a candidate for early redundancy.

It's amazing how quickly Freddie, Stuart and Violet, the tart trio at the sweetly sour heart of Vicious (ITV), have become as familiar as old friends.

Only two episodes in and it already feels like we've known them for years. Which of course is the case, because what this defiantly old-school sitcom amounts to is a masterclass in stereotypes.

That it scarcely matters is down to the impeccable comic timing of Ian McKellen, Derek Jacobi and Frances de la Tour, who make the absolute most of what, in lesser hands, could be thin pickings.

Last night offered mild farce in a department store involving a suspected affair and a running gag about a might-be dead dog. Every line was expertly squeezed for laughs.

The real joke, of course, is that Vicious isn't really Vicious at all - it's obvious that, not very deep down at all, they love each other to bits.

With the aid of string, a brace of willing stool pigeon comedians and a resident boffin, Dara O'Briain: School Of Hard Sums (Dave) is a noble attempt to cross-pollinate maths and comedy.

For me, it's rather more successful at multiplying giggles than explaining the intricacies of high-flown formulae but, hey, that's just the way my algorithms groove.

Under the banner title Does Crime Add Up? (just ask the Ndrangheta), Professor Marcus du Sautoy set O'Briain and the willing duo of Mark Watson and Andrew Maxwell the task of cracking assorted conundrums, from a relatively simple trick involving lining up in coloured hats to a mindbender of a murder mystery worthy of Poirot, wherein the lads had a high old time tracking the movements of a killer through a park, using mathematical logic to nail the killer.

No idea how they did it but it looked like a right old lark.

Wright Way took a very wrong turn on the comedy front

Back in the day, Ben Elton - the author of this crime against comedy - was a motor-mouthing angry young stand-up, manning the barricades against Maggie Thatcher and all things Establishment. Who knew he would end up writing a sitcom that makes Mrs Brown's Boys look like cutting-edge satire?

Let's face it, it's not exactly a golden age for British sitcoms. So when a half-indecent one stumbles along, let's hope it's given time to grow.

As Plebs bowed out last night, I found myself hoping this wasn't the last we'd seen of Shredder, Copier and Water Boy ('Man! Water Man!').

Though the closing episode, Saturnalia, didn't have anything to match my favourite moment of the series - Doon Mackichan downing a banana - it did leave the door gaping open for a second run as the hapless Marcus (aka Copier) still hadn't bagged himself any Cynthia action. You feel for the boy, you really do.

That's down to Tom Rosenthal's endearing turn as Marcus, which started off dangerously close to Inbetweener Will but has happily grown to fill out his own tunic.

Marcus could come off as a whiny whinger but Rosenthal's everyman likeability makes you root for him. With Joel Fry's Stylax, he turns Plebs into a (funny) spin on Two And A Half Men. Only with a short bloke (Ryan Sampson's terrific slave Grumio) instead of a fat kid.