Lucy Mangan

Your next box set: Brass

There's hilarious trouble up mill in this lovably daft DH Lawrence pastiche from the 80s.

Review: John Le Mesurier: It's All Been Rather Lovely

John Le Mesurier never did anything as vulgar as showing his feelings, but he was always remarkably English.

I laughed many, many times during The Sarah Millican Television Programme (BBC2). At first glance, Millican's is a warm, unthreatening world of gentle comedy about nanas, nighties and nature programmes but, in fact, she's an iron fist in a Marigold glove. Her deadpan asides and sudden glances to camera have a touch of Eric Morecambe and her sudden shut-downs ("You've got to be tolerant of all life," says Chris Packham. "No," she replies simply) are things of beauty impossible to reproduce in print. The format's not right yet, but once it is, hopefully television will become Millican's world and we can live in it.

TV review: The Untold Tommy Cooper

You didn't need to be a Tommy Cooper fan to find this take on his life compelling.

Your next box set - Gary: Tank Commander

A sitcom about an army tank crew that will have you marvelling at its brilliance while crying with laughter.

Cable girl: Little Crackers

The series of festive vignettes based on household names' real-life experiences exuded Christmas spirit.

Both far too much and not nearly enough were being asked of David Jason in his new vehicle, a sitcom entitled The Royal Bodyguard (BBC1), in which he plays a royal bodyguard. (That is, a bodyguard to the Queen, not a member of the royal family trying his hand at gainful employment. Sorry. I thought I'd clear that up first in case you were, quite legitimately, slightly fogged after two days of feasting and merriment.)

It was a part that required much gun-in-hand rolling under beds, leaping on to horses and hiding in hostess trollies and not much in the way of droll delivery of verbal gags. Writing the part for - or giving it to - Jason was to play to all of his weaknesses and none of his strengths. Superbly comically deft and nimble, no one could claim - even before he turned 71 - that he was an athletic actor. It's all in the timing and fleeting flickers across his vividly labile face. Don't give him broad slapstick - unless it's That Fall, 30 years ago, through That Bar - it's too agonising a waste.

Beyond that, the best way to describe The Royal Bodyguard is that for those that like that sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like. People saying "Please tell me it's not Hubble, sir" and it turning out to be Hubble. Hubble trying to eat a whole lobster with a knife and fork. A man described by his superiors as "a walking disaster" accidentally saving the Queen from an assassination attempt to their furious disbelief (you almost expected an instruction to "Press the red button if you want comedy steam graphics coming out of their ears!") and so, terribly on. The best the spirit of Christmas can lead me to say about it is no more.

Cable girl: Threesome

The jokes are weak but when it's not trying to be funny, Threesome is very funny.

Comic Relief's mix of mirth and misery done to a turn

BBC show features appearances from Andy Murray, Kim Cattrall and Simon Callow - plus Ronnie Corbett hiding in the bushes.

A man watches an episode of Outnumbered, sees Daniel Roche as the ruthlessly logical, constitutionally yet unmaliciously troublesome middle child Ben and thinks: "You know, there hasn't been a decent adaptation of the Just William stories for over 30 years. Bring me that eight-year-old boy and his agent."

Just William: The Sweet Little Girl in White (BBC1) was the first adaptation by Simon Nye of four of the hundreds of stories Richmal Crompton wrote about her hero. Aimed at William's own age demographic, it was half an hour long, went out at lunchtime and delivered a quick, charming romp through an adventure that encompassed all the most important elements of the Brown universe - the Outlaws, Jumble, woodland trespass, irate gamekeepers, eventual triumph over adult adversaries and the resplendent presence of Violet Elizabeth Bott. No one, of course, who has seen Bonnie Langford's incarnation (or indeed Bonnie Langford, full stop) can ever truly expunge the memory, but Isabella Blake-Thomas's version was probably quite thrillingly terrifying enough for this mollycoddled age.

The glory of William himself is impossible wholly to capture outside the books because so much of it comes from the contrast between Crompton's high style and William's relentless atavism, but the greatest danger is that he becomes in translation simply a naughty, cocksure boy - a danger not lessened by the borderline smugness of the pathologically confident young characters in Outnumbered. Thanks to what I suspect was a concerted effort by director, cast and crew, not excepting, of course, Roche himself, this was avoided, and William did not slip into generically slappable mischief-maker but remained the belligerent idealist of legend.