Marcus Brigstocke

As much as it does good business filling its schedules with Top Gear repeats and faintly laddish comedy, Dave hasn't quite been able to resist trying its hand at original programming. Argumental - now returning for a third series - was one of the first fruits of that idea. Hosted by the continually charming John Sergeant, who grins his way through a script that seems slightly too crude for him, the show asks you to enjoy the spectacle of third-string TV comics notionally debating contentious propositions, but ultimately reeling off hastily assembled routines. Marcus Brigstocke and Rufus Hound captain teams featuring Frankie Boyle and Andrew Maxwell.

Jon Sergeant on Argumental

Jon Sergeant explains how he gets extra pleasure from seeing Marcus Brigstocke struggle with some of the topics he's given to argue either for or against.

Recently my son came up to my office with a laptop to show me a clip from what he described as "the world's funniest show". He was referring to Would I Lie to You?. This may or may not surprise you, depending on your understanding of what the average 11-year-old boy finds funny.

Having watched last night's instalment, my own professional opinion (I was recently criticised for having no TV-reviewing qualifications, but I have since started a night course) is that Would I Lie to You? is some way off being the world's funniest show, but is still pretty funny. How the game works is not important. It's been a long time since the rules of any panel show mattered, because there isn't anything at stake - not even pride. This one is basically just an opportunity for comedians to insult each other.

And that's a pretty reliable formula, because even if you don't like a particular comedian (lots of people don't like Jimmy Carr, for example), you'll enjoy the bits where everyone takes the piss out of him. Last night's panel consisted of four funny guys and Terry Christian. And Jamelia, who also isn't funny, except in the sense that she's funnier than Terry Christian. But we can all put that on our CVs.

The highlight for me was the deeply improbable claim that Marcus Brigstocke was once a podium dancer at the Ministry of Sound, during weeks off from his other job working on an oil rig. This turns out to be completely true. "So Flashdance is actually based on your life," said Jimmy Carr. I think that's funny. Sue me.

The best bit this week is David Mitchell's sort-of impression of Jodie Marsh (she's a "glamour model", the one who isn't Jordan). Of course Mitchell is ill-equipped even to approximate Ms Marsh's two famously overblown assets, but he does a very decent career precis of the big-bosomed one's raison d'etre, albeit delivered in his exasperated A-level history teacher's voice. It's pretty much down to captains Mitchell and Lee Mack to keep things going, with some lacklustre guests. Jimmy Carr is impossible to like; Terry Christian is clearly baffled and well aware that he's out of his depth, to the point that you might end up feeling sorry for him; and singer Jamelia yet again inexplicably turns up on a TV panel show. Host Rob Brydon helps the show bounce along as he referees the arguments and interrogations: was Christian interrogated by police hunting a jewel thief? And did comedian Marcus Brigstocke work as a podium dancer?

While his rants on Radio 4's Now Show have garnered a cult following, Marcus Brigstocke has yet to go truly mainstream. That's by no means a bad thing, in that Brigstocke doesn't turn up endlessly on panel shows, so it's always good to see him. Here, in a series first broadcast on BBC4, he gets celebs to embark on five new cultural experiences. Tonight, that means broadcaster Emily Maitlis listening to Dolly Parton, watching The Godfather, reading The Satanic Verses, playing a videogame and riding a motorbike.

This Radio 4 show moved to BBC4 earlier in the year, and now gets a terrestrial repeat on Friday nights. The format is simple: take a good-for-a-chuckle celeb (eg Clive Anderson, Esther Rantzen) and film them as they try a new experience. Tonight Nigel Havers tells Marcus Brigstocke what it's like to watch The Simpsons, get a tattoo and listen to The Smiths for the first time . . . As far as R4 banter-comedy goes, it's not bad. File alongside, if not necessarily in, Room 101.

If you didn't catch it on BBC4, here's your chance to see Marcus Brigstocke chum up with celebrities and get them to do things they've not done (Nigel Havers: Watch The Simpsons, get a tattoo and listen to The Smiths) and then mark them out of 10. It's a radio-based format and the only people who will find it improved are the people who like seeing Marcus Brigstocke while he blunders leaden-footed over his guest's jokes. Ah, he's not so bad, really. And neither is this show. It's certainly less irritating than Newsnight Review, which this repeat replaces.

Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, it is now possible to watch Radio 4 on the television. Not by tuning in to digital channel 704, where one can listen to the Today programme while watching a soulless blank screen, but by watching BBC4, where insufferable self-satisfied discussion programmes have taken on a new and horrific visual form. Your genial host: the bourgeois Frankenstein* Marcus Brigstocke, whose approach to off-the-cuff conversation is to count silently inside his strange elongated cylinder of a head until his guest has shut up, before stomping in with the leaden tread of an asphalt welder to deliver a series of scripted quips.

And when it comes to smug, middle-class chat shows, the half-arsed format is king. Here, they're never sure whether to point and mock (John Humphrys has never had coffee from Starbucks!!!!! Can you imagine!!!!) or to trawl the depths in search of slapstick (Clive Anderson, if you can credit it, has never once in his life practised judo!!!! How humorous). Perhaps, with a Brigstockean constipated sneer, it should be renamed Never Seen Room 101.

Marcus Brigstocke interview

Comedian Marcus Brigstocke talks about the return of Argumental, Jon Stewart and his upcoming stand up tour...

I've Never Seen Star Wars, hosted by Marcus Brigstocke, encourages celebrity guests to try completely new experiences.

This week's guest was John Humphrys from the Today programme. Unable to change the habit of a lifetime, Humphrys persistently talked over Brigstocke, disrupting his patter and obliterating several punch lines. Brigstocke, like a conscientious midwife, stayed with the script until all the gags were safely delivered, although some of the spontaneity was lost in the process.

Shows like I've Never Seen Star Wars are heavily dependent upon the comic input of their guests, and John Humphrys was not a particularly forthcoming one.

The original radio format is left almost intact, undisturbed by any visual innovation. Close your eyes and all you would have missed would have been a short moondancing lesson from Brigstocke and a cluttered set design heavily reminiscent of Room 101.