Nigel Havers

The young, feckless admin team who work in the post room of a firm of lawyers is the setting for a not particularly original new comedy series. Revelling in the mundane and the useless seems to be the staple of comedy shows these days. Nevertheless Lunch Monkeys does have its moments. These mainly involve new girl Shelley (Rachel Rae), libidinous solicitor Charlie (Steve John Shepherd) and the dim-witted Asif (Abdullah Afzal). Nigel Havers stars as a partner but looks rather out of place. In this first episode, Kenny (Christian Foster) tries to ask Tania (Jessica Hall) out on a date.

One of the best things about this new comedy series is that it doesn't have an idiot laughter track. Nor is it recorded in front of an audience, which is another trick that producers use to generate artificial hype. Lunch Monkeys takes place in the postroom of a personal-injury law firm, which offers a kind of sanctuary for school leavers, oddballs and assorted misfits. They are demented with boredom and spend all day behaving like unruly fifth formers, which places Nigel Havers - the firm's senior partner - in the role of a headmaster. The writer David Isaac drew on his own experience working as a supervising solicitor in a Manchester law firm. It's broad, good-humoured, knockabout comedy without a subtle bone in its body. Technically speaking, it is somewhere between painless and quite good fun.

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.

BBC1 chooses not to revisit Havers 1980s comedy

BBC1 has turned down a revival of 1980s sitcom Don't Wait Up, in which Nigel Havers would have reprised his role as Dr Tom Latimer.

BBC3 goes to Manchester for fresh pair of sitcoms

Nigel Havers is the unlikely star of one of a pair of new BBC3 comedy series from Manchester indies.

Admin (working title) is a 6 x 30-minute "slacker sitcom" by Manchester-based comedy and entertainment indie Channel K. It is set in the postroom of a law firm and follows a group of young workers who try to get on by doing as little as possible.

The series was piloted in May last year and was based on the real-life experiences of writer David Isaac, who also wrote for BBC1's Not Going Out. Havers will support a yet-to-be-confirmed and relatively unknown cast in the role of Mike, the firm's owner