Larry Lamb

We learn more about the unconventional relationship between the poised, self-possessed Rowan and her married lover Tommy (Celia Imrie and Larry Lamb) as Stewart Harcourt's likeable family drama continues. Their love is tested by a family crisis, when Rowan's troubled granddaughter decides she must track down her mother. None of this runs particularly deep, but Love and Marriage rolls along nicely, and Imrie and Lamb are an engaging couple.

As a family barbecue and camping trip unfold, all of the Paradises get together for a party. It's a noisy occasion, but truths emerge as their various family lives begin to take divergent paths.

"Secrets in a marriage are like dry rot in a house," opines newly retired lollipop lady Pauline Paradise (Alison Steadman) to an off-screen interviewer. Her husband Ken (Duncan Preston), slumped beside her on the sofa in a near-permanent state of catatonic disengagement, concurs.

As do the rest of the extended Paradise family, their homes visited in turn by this shamelessly contrived but extremely convenient narrative device, which throws into stark relief the shared veneer of domestic contentment with the cauldron of deceit, disappointment and dissatisfaction bubbling beneath.

There is - you guessed it - trouble in the Paradises, and ITV's new comedy drama Love and Marriage will be here over the next six weeks to chronicle it.

There were an awful lot of Paradises to introduce, with an awful lot of back stories to establish, so episode one was rather obliged to sacrifice subtlety on the altar of exposition.

When characters weren't sharing information with the camera they were frequently to be found telling each other things they already knew - "You were a top model in the 1970s" - for the benefit of viewers at home. During the first 20 minutes, the top-rate cast waded heroically through a mud slide of explanatory dialogue, with the threat of submersion beneath a wave of audience impatience never more than a line away.

Shortly after the first ad break, however, they hit dry land. The storylines kicked in, the dialogue came alive - "She keeps saying my name as if she's never heard it before and doesn't like the sound of it" - and proceedings began to gather a satisfying pace.

The Paradise clan, we learnt, are beset by a multitude of problems - financial, emotional, domestic, professional, romantic, historic - which they look to matriarch Pauline to either solve or shoulder.

Following the accidental death of her father, the much-put-upon Pauline reassesses her life and rejects all the roles imposed upon her. To everyone's amazement, including her own, she ups sticks, moves in with her racy younger sister and starts telephoning potential new suitors at two o'clock in the morning.

Despite its remorselessly jaunty soundtrack, Love and Marriage explored some sombre themes and was all the more interesting for it. Steadman's performance drives the drama, but she has excellent support from a stellar cast that also includes Ashley Jensen, Larry Lamb and Celia Imrie.

If not quite hooked, I shall stick with the series, if only to find out why the Paradise family's quiz team didn't get a point for correctly identifying The Constant Gardener as Rachel Weisz's Oscar-winning vehicle.

The peerless Alison Steadman walks the line between laughter and tears with aplomb, taking the lead as Pauline Paradise in this six-part comedy drama. Nearing the end of her road as a lollipop lady, Pauline is apprehensive about her looming retirement. But does anyone in her family care that her life is at a crossroads? Not a jot, it seems, with taciturn hubby Ken (Duncan Preston) being, well, taciturn, and her brood of offspring preoccupied with their own lives and rearing assorted infants. It's a Syndicate-style format, with the perspective shifting from one Paradise to another, week by week. The impressive supporting cast includes Celia Imrie, Larry Lamb, Ashley Jensen, Graeme Hawley and Zoe Telford.

Gavin & Stacey star Alison Steadman washes herself of eager-to-please Essex mum Pam to play a matriarch who's finally had enough of her family in Love and Marriage, ITV's latest star-packed drama.

When her husband fails to show support throughout her retirement and the death of her father, frustrated doormat Pauline Paradise (Steadman) breaks it to her adult kids - who include Ashley Jensen and Coronation Street star Graeme Hawley - that she's packing her bags and starting a new life. Also featuring Celia Imrie and Larry Lamb, Love and Marriage is at once funny and poignant, disheartening and upflifting. We'd say it's definitely worth a peek, even before the mini-Gavin & Stacey reunion.

Lauren Laverne hates fake tans, square plates and flags ("Nothing good ever came out of a flag: racism, nationalism, Geri Halliwell at the Brits"). Larry Lamb isn't happy about all those trendy, confusing loo signs ("Save it for the jury," retorts host Frank Skinner). And comedian David O'Doherty doesn't like the age 35 - "the first truly disappointing age." "I once went to an 18-30s do," says Skinner. "I got completely mixed up and went as Lord Alfred Tennyson." He's here all week.

If Friday night panel shows are your thing, then you could do a lot worse than this likeable option hosted by an on-form Frank Skinner. Three celebrities compete to banish their pet hates to the hellish environs of Room 101. Tonight, former EastEnders actor Larry Lamb, comedian David O'Doherty and TV and radio presenter Lauren Laverne square off against each other, the last of whom wants to can fake tan ("We're walking around looking like a nation of Oompa Loompas," she laments).

To an entire generation, Griff Rhys Jones might be famous for being the man who takes Rory McGrath and Dara O'Briain sailing, climbs mountains, and presents It'll Be Alright On The Night.

The last in this series of three sees him back at the BBC performing the kind of sketches that made him a household name on Not The Nine O'Clock News and Alas Smith and Jones.

And while the humour is so comfortably old-fashioned your first impression might be that these sketches have been sitting in a drawer since the 1990s, on closer inspection you'll see that there's a whole new bunch of modern obsessions to joke about.

The Reservoir Dogs spoof featuring Griff as Mr Green and former EastEnder Larry Lamb is a lovely mix of the old and the new. But one sketch about firearms in schools, is so mis-judged it wouldn't be a laughing matter in this or any decade.

Griff's other guest stars, Hugh Bonneville, Tom Hollander and Kevin McNally, are well chosen.

But the real draw of the night sees him reunited with his comedy and business partner Mel Smith for a brand new head-to-head sketch - their first together in 16 years.

After resurrecting the comedy of Lenny Henry and Jasper Carrott, there are plenty of other folk who were funny in the 80s who we'd like to see dusted off. More please.

"We want to return to the old-fashioned comedy sketch standard," the young lad from the BBC tells Griff Rhys Jones. "There'll be a set with sofas, fat suits and highly coloured wigs, and you dressed as a woman,"he adds encouragingly, as if Jones needed persuading back into the comedy spotlight.

Some impressive guest stars (Hugh Bonneville, Tom Hollander and Larry Lamb among them) pop up in sketches that certainly have that old-fashioned comic quality - you could safely watch them with your granny. However, it's the updating of their trademark Alas Smith & Jones head-to-head sketch with his old partner Mel Smith that really makes this special.

It's the first time they've performed it for 15 years and, as Smith and Jones meander their way through a discussion about their alleged rift, they come to realise that friendship is important and grudges are irrelevant. "It's taught me the value of camaraderie," concludes Mel. "Well ... it is a lovely cheese," agrees Griff.

Surprisingly, this is the funniest so far of these one-off sketch shows by faded comedy stars. Maybe it's because Griff Rhys Jones has moved successfully on to other TV ventures, but he's clearly not taking his return to comedy too seriously and as a result the laughter flows quickly and easily. Hugh Bonneville, Tom Hollander and Larry Lamb are among the excellent supporting players in sketches skewering everything from bankers' bonuses to football supporters. Plus, 16 years on, there's even a face-to-face with his old Alas Smith and Jones partner, Mel Smith.

Interview: Larry Lamb, actor

Larry Lamb has, as Americans say, done a lot of work on himself. Before me sits an urbane, self-aware bloke with charisma to spare, but his life was on course to pan out very differently.