Nina Wadia

I don't think I've ever seen a more impressive cast lined up for a TV comedy than the one Gold has assembled for its special one-off original commission Murder on the Blackpool Express. So I ought to namecheck them, oughtn't I?

There's Johnny Vegas, Sian Gibson (best known for Peter Kay's Car Share), Nigel Havers, Una Stubbs, Griff Rhys Jones, Nina Wadia, Sheila Reid, Kevin Eldon, Mark Heap, Kimberley Nixon, Katy Cavanagh, Matthew Cottle, Susie Blake and Javone Prince. There you have them: some of the best comedic talent from the past half a century or so - and a lot for the scriptwriters and directors to live up to.

Where do you go with that lot? Well, Blackpool, obviously, on a "literary coach tour" with Vegas driving and Gibson as the guide, but also a journey of detective investigation to discover exactly which of the assembled odd bods did for pensioner Marjorie, murdered by means of a dodgy cob with coronation chicken filling. There's one clue for you. Remember: Means, Motive, Opportunity. Enjoy.

Review: Murder on the Blackpool Express, Gold

The Christmas spirit has already started this year. Not just with the John Lewis adverts but with this comedy.

Finding Fatimah review: faintly desperate dating comedy

This indie comedy about Muslim people looking for love in Manchester suffers from terrible production values, wasted talent and a critical lack of laughs.

This one-off is a reminder of how funny Goodness Gracious Me is. Meera Syal and Nina Wadia are the Competitive Goddesses, sitting on clouds totting up how many worshippers they have on their smartphones. Meanwhile, Captain Brownadder takes to the trenches, and Gandhi is reinvented in a Martin Scorsese film. One of the highlights sees the India Broadcast Company, home of "lavish new costume drama, Brownton Abbey", deal with a new head of diversity who suggests an English season.

Radio Times review

Step onto the Citizen Khan shuttle and travel right back in time, stopping in the early 1970s when you could make a joke about "a dicky bow" on a TV sitcom and audiences would die laughing.

But Citizen Khan scoffs in the faces of chronology and fashion and yes, there it is, a joke about a dicky bow, as in "maybe I'll get my dicky bow out". "Steady on!" wails Mr Khan (Adil Ray) and we are back in the age of innocence. Do people even refer to "dicky bows" any more?

Never mind, Citizen Khan's world is a lost paradise of pratfalls and silly misunderstandings. Tonight he's involved in a daft scam involving cut-price nappies and he faces his formidable sister in law, Aunty Noor (Nina Wadia).

We have another show that, unlike The Fast Show Special, did film all new sketches for the BBC Two anniversary as we welcomed back the brilliant Goodness Gracious Me. It felt to me as if writers and stars Nina Wadia, Meera Syal, Sanjeev Bhaskar and Kulvinder Ghir had something to prove as almost every sketch had some value to it. All of the favourite characters were back from Mr Everything is Indian who had his theories on Sherlock to the overbearing mother who claimed she could make an Apple Phone from an aubergine. An incredibly timely sketch saw the Kapoor/Coopers attempting to sign up for UKip before realising that they'd been recruited purely because they were immigrants. In line with the celebration of the channel's comedy output, the team also presented their own take on the 'Class Sketch' from The Frost Report. Rather than just being a jokes-only sketch show, Goodness Gracious Me always had much more to say about the way that the Asian population were treated in Britain. A sketch focusing on an Indian newspaper, brilliantly known as The Delhi Mail poked fun at the ludicrous nature of print journalism in this country. I'm glad that this sketch had the most time devoted to it as every joke and observation was cleverly executed to the point that I wondered why anybody would ever by The Daily Mail in the first place. Obviously not everything worked, I wasn't personally a fan of the group's take on Mary Poppins, but there was more than enough evidence here that the team are still at the top of their game. As the show finished with a brilliant spoof of Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines', I was crossing my fingers that this reunion special was acting as a pilot for a possible new series. Based on the evidence in this programme alone, Goodness Gracious Me is still funnier and cleverer than the majority of current sketch shows and I for one would welcome its return.

Goodness Gracious Me was a groundbreaking show 16 years ago: the first sketch comedy to have a principal cast that was all-Asian, and a launchpad for actors such as Nina Wadia. Now reunited to celebrate 50 years of BBC Two comedy, some of the team's staples are revived. Elsewhere, a UK with some strong views about immigration and an emerging political party such as Ukip provide a lively background for their satirical comedy to work.

Radio Times review

Sanjeev Bhaskar, Kulvinder Ghir, Meera Syal, Nina Wadia and "token white" Dave Lamb have lost none of their comedic talent since this sketch show last graced our screens in 2001. Shown as part of BBC Two's 50th anniversary celebrations, this one-off is a selection of new sketches featuring familiar characters, including the man who believes everything has its origins in India (Sherlock and pretty well every other TV detective from Poirot to Columbo) and oh-so-British social climber Mr Kapoor (this time hoping to stand as a Ukip candidate for Parliament).

Among the new routines is an Indian version of Mary Poppins, a clever dig at one of our more right-wing newspapers in The Delhi Mail and a remake of The Frost Report's class sketch that almost works. It's not exactly subtle humour but the simple concept of taking Asian stereotypes and turning them on their heads is as relevant as ever.