Marcus Brigstocke

Dave's flagship programme. Okay, it's not perfect - but it can be funny. It's hosted by kindly John Sergeant, with Rufus Hound and Marcus Brigstocke as captains - they're nowhere near awful. The standard of guest is pretty high - the first ep kicks off with ever-good-value Dara O'Briiiiaiiin and The Thick Of It's Chris Addison. He's going to be a Hollywood player after In The Loop comes out, according to yesterday's supplements. All in all, it'll be a welcome relief from today's News At Ten.

BBC Radio 4 comedy I've Never Seen Star Wars transferred to television recently, presented by Marcus Brigstocke - a stand-up comedian who resembles a geography teacher, and who's apparently determined to find fame by appearing on every British satirical show in existence.

INSSW is a variant of Room 101, where a weekly celebrity guest must talk amusingly about a certain topic. In the aforementioned series, it was pet hates; in this show it's things they've never experienced, but wish they had. Of course, a proviso is that each guest gets to plug the gaps in their life-experience beforehand, then relate everything to Brigstocke.

It's a show that clearly relies on its guests and their choices to amuse. I don't hate Clive Anderson, but it's difficult to remember why he was a fairly big star back in the '90s, despite the fact his enduring legacy is being bumbling while hosting Whose Line Is It Anyway. His wit has long since been exposed as relying solely on daft word-play, too. His choices here were uninspiring and not particularly strong to deconstruct for comedy. What humour can you mine from the revelation someone hasn't seen Withnail & I until very recently, let's be honest.

I've heard a few episodes of the Radio 4 series in my time, and that sounded much sillier and comically distended than anything here - recently, Sandi Toksvig admitted she's never eaten a Pot Noodle, and was promptly heard cooking and eating one in comic detail as if it were an epicurean delicacy. There was nothing to equal that amusement in two episodes of the TV version, despite the assumed a visual medium should bring.

Take Room 101 and rip it off with a slight twist, and you're left with I've Never Seen Star Wars. Based around the simple concept of giving celebrities cultural experiences that they've yet to experience and seeing if they enjoy it, this was fairly amusing - though that may be because Marcus Brigstocke's first guest was the witty Clive Anderson.

The programme in which Marcus Brigstocke cajoles some famous faces to do something they've never done before or actively avoided - he forced Barry Cryer to watch an episode of Friends and Joan Bakewell to have a beatboxing lesson - leaps off the radio and on to the small screen. Tongiht's first episode sees Clive Anderson broaden his cultural horizons.

The early-evening Radio 4 comedy in which Marcus Brigstocke encourages celebrities to venture outside their comfort zones transfers to TV, with Clive Anderson the first to try five fresh cultural experiences. The former barrister had not been recorded throwing caution to the wind at the time of going to press, but we're promised few changes to the programme's original format. Recently we've heard Phill Jupitus eating his first Findus crispy pancake, Joan Bakewell getting a beat-boxing lesson and Barry Cryer changing a baby's nappy - the result being an enjoyably less-splenetic version of Room 101, in which the guests do sometimes find pleasure in the very things they've been avoiding.

Sometimes it's comforting - in a way - to get back to comedy the way it used to be made by well educated middle-class males. Here, Marcus Brigstocke takes his radio show asking guests to sample new experiences. First up is Clive Anderson who watches Withnail and I, does the National Lottery, learns judo, reads Men Are From Mars Women are from Venus, and tries to relax in a floatation chamber. It's all quite jolly, it makes you smile, then it's over. At no point does it make you want to kick your TV screen in, which given this week's other attempts at comedy - even Comic Relief will have to go some to be less funny that the shambolic nastiness of Horne And Corden - is quite a feat.

Creating comedy from controversy demands more than regulars Marcus Brigstocke and Rufus Hound merely spouting near-nonsense loudly and provocatively. Still, the guests in this show, including Dara O'Briain, Johnny Vegas and Frankie Boyle, show how it's done.

Dave to get Argumental again

Dave has ordered a second series of the John Sergeant-hosted panel show Argumental.

The 12 x 30-minute series by Tiger Aspect features team captains Rufus Hound and Marcus Brigstocke, who battle it out to win "important" debates.

Patrick Kielty doesn't just join the regulars in the bargain basement comic debate show this week, he outshines both Marcus Brigstocke and Rufus Hound. You might think that's easy but, after this, Lucy Porter probably doesn't. It's undemanding entertainment for audience and performers alike.

Welcome back, my friends, to the sequence of news-based satire programmes that seemingly never ends. After six weeks of The News Quiz, we now have six of The Now Show, which will doubtless give way to Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive and thence to The News Quiz again in the spring. Perhaps Radio 4 thinks that life is hard enough at the moment without shocking us with the new at the end of a hard week. And, to be fair, the last series of The Now Show was something of a comeback to form, with the credit crunch, the re-emergence of Peter Mandelson and the sheer otherworldliness of Sarah Palin providing plenty of grist to the mill for Steve Punt, Hugh Dennis, Marcus Brigstocke, Jon Holmes, Laura Shavin and Mitch Benn.