Mark Lawson

W1A: can a BBC satire about the BBC ever really bite?

If W1A were made by ITV or Channel 4, the storyline would have shown BBC executives desperately wondering whether they could get away with exonerating Clarkson for alleged violence - or, as satire works by exaggeration, even murder - because of his commercial value to the organisation. External writers might also have had fun with the negotiations between PR and legal teams that presumably led to the use of the antique term "fracas" to describe his actions.

Has British comedy learned how to portray foreigners?

The 1970s was littered with sitcoms that will never see the light of day again, thanks to their xenophobic themes. But Asylum and Benidorm reveal more sophistication in their portrayal of non-Brits.

Miranda's pratfalls have been done with panache

Miranda Hart's sitcom will receive a mixed farewell when it ends for good on New Year's Day, but I salute its originality and scholastic fascination with comedic conventions.

Miranda detractors unlikely to see her fall on her face

Inventive and well-acted sitcom bows out after 20 episodes, blending traditional slapstick with painfully funny originality.

Repeat offenders: the 1970s TV shows that refuse to die

The decade that gave us staples of our current schedules - The Two Ronnies, Dad's Army, Morecambe & Wise - is also responsible for the television we'll never be able to watch again.

In praise of ... Nicholas Parsons

The veteran host of Just a Minute has no plans to retire, and killed off all such speculation at the Cheltenham Literature festival.

Scrotal Recall: an infectious and very clever concept

The new sitcom, in which a young man visits former lovers, alphabetically, to inform them that he has a venereal disease, uses its seemingly rigid structure to great comic effect.

Do the stars on Celebrity Squares deserve better?

The gameshow, which ran in the 1970s and 1990s, has been brought back by ITV with Warwick Davis hosting. But how will its creaky noughts-and-crosses format fare in the modern age?

With Peep Show and Friday Night Dinner, Channel 4 has a strong history in the comedy of sexual and social embarrassment, and, based on the title and premise alone, there will be high hopes for this latest filth-com. Folk-rock singer Johnny Flynn plays Dylan Witter, a man diagnosed with chlamydia who must contact a different former sexual partner in each episode to inform them of the possible souvenir of him that they possess.

After playing one of TV's most vivid characters - the cool/cruel student Vod in Fresh Meat - Zawe Ashton had earned the chance of a leading role in this highly anticipated six-parter by promising dramatist DC Moore. The recession-sensitive plot has Ashton as one of a group of civil servants unwillingly relocated from London to Northampton as part of government cuts who are finding that money and love are no easier in the provinces.