Olivia Colman

The wonderful thing about Rev. (BBC Two, Monday) is that it is meant to be funny and it is genuinely hilarious. Tom Hollander and Olivia Colman play the leads but it is more an ensemble comedy with top performances, too, from Simon McBurney as the Archdeacon, Miles Jupp as Nigel and Steve Evets as Colin.

In fact dear Colin provides all the jaw-dropping, non-PC moments; not least for his fundraising efforts for St Saviour's which amounted to supplying drugs to the estate. He knows his market.

It was especially touching to see him present Adam (the Rev), with some oversize track pants from Sports Direct for his new baby as part of his campaign to be "godfather". Who knows what that term means to him?

Rev also pushes the boundaries or let's say, gives them a nudge. Last week, Adam bumped into Yousef, the local Iman, who had a sense of humour, "within limits". I could not understand why Adam did not jump at the chance of attending one of the Iman's "Jihadi barbecues". The mind boggles.

The best line, however, came from the archdeacon who said he was off to hear "Rageh Omaar giving a talk on Djibouti pirates". I was gutted to have missed that one. If only the Church of England could harness the power of Rev., it would have no trouble filling the pews.

"I don't want a christening yet. I've already lost you to him." Thus Olivia Colman, with just that phrase, sets the entire tone for Rev, as she has quietly done for each of the past two series. By turns giggly, mournful, drunk, charming, ballsily defiant and utterly conflicted, she encapsulates pretty much this secular nation's attitude to 21st-century Christianity, which could be summed up in the title of a fine Douglas Adams novel (writing not about God but Earth itself): Mostly Harmless.

A triumphant return but, for a comedy, it's pretty strong gravy when you think about it, as you should. The fact that God is man's finest confection detracts not one whit from "his" essential confected goodness, and the palaces of myth serve, by and large, to do great good. Except when they get in the way of real life, or bore, or nag: and that's why Colman does such a tremendous job, refracting our every niggle with organised religion through the simple premise of being married to, and more pertinently in love with, a rev. So we share her increasing frustration at the fact that hubby, the Rev Adam Smallbone (Tom Hollander), has to open his door not just to waifs and strays but to borderline psychopaths: troubling enough when they were just the two, but the arrival of baby Katie is a delight that is slowly, delightfully, doing their nuts in.

It is also, I should have mentioned this, extremely funny. I don't think that Hollander or his co-writer James Wood have put much more than a tootsie wrong since the first series, but their writing in this latest outing becomes ever more deft, daring, even confrontational. The scene in which Mick, the splendidly grubby dreadlocked Jimmy Akingbola (carrying the most foetidly evil one-armed doll) offers to babysit, with the well-intentioned cackle: "You take your lady out for a nice night an' when you comes back, ta-da! She still alive!" mesmerised: and also spoke of poverty, race relations, child abuse and 10 other things which don't get a better outing in an entire hour of the increasing fractious Question Time. Adam/Tom's facial reaction to this charming offer was a brief masterclass in English politesse. And at his heart is not so much a crisis of faith but the full and faithful knowledge that God does not exist other than to provide the wages.

As far away from Derek Nimmo in All Gas and Gaiters, in generational terms, as it's possible to get, and hyperspace-removed from the Vicar of Dibley, as in it's funny: not only but very. And so wise. Perhaps I'm reading too much into what is, after all, a half-hour of light entertainment on a Monday night, but when I saw Adam/Tom - I cherish the believability of the character so much, they're interchangeable - standing in some yakhole of a playground pulling on an e-cigarette, he simply felt like every small man mulling over big thoughts, as opposed to every big man thinking small thoughts, ever. I don't have too much choice in the matter, but I know which one I'd rather be.

Baby Smallbone makes a grand entrance to open the third series of this lugubriously endearing sitcom, joining her dad - the world-weary but eternally optimistic Rev Adam (Tom Hollander) - and her slightly less idealistic mum Alex (Olivia Colman).

The divine cherry on top of the comedy cake is the perfect pairing of Getting On's Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine as cost-cutting church types who sit somewhere below God but well above our Rev on the heavenly ladder.

This puts them in a position to 'reorganise' his church out of existence unless he can come up with some PC box-ticking inspiration pretty darn quick.

Back (at last) for a third series, Tom Hollander's beleaguered cleric Adam Smallbone and wife Alex (Olivia Colman) are now the parents of a baby daughter, but the finances of St Saviour's are still threadbare. Enter two welcome additions - played by Getting On's Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine - an area dean and diocesan secretary intent on shutting down Adam's church. Can an ecumenical church fête, shared by the go-ahead imam of a nearby mosque (and played by Kayvan Novak) save the day?

Tom Hollander and Olivia Colman interviewed by vicar

Rev Dr Giles Fraser discovered one of the Rev characters is based on him...

Rev, BBC Two, review

Hallelujah! Tom Hollander and Olivia Colman return in the ever-endearing BBC Two sitcom Rev.

Rev preview

Olivia Colman says: "I really liked Rev because it's well written, it's beautiful and the people are both lovable and flawed."

Olivia Colman and Tom Hollander on Rev.

With none of the otherworldly airs or whisky-soaked vices of stereotyped TV priests, this thoughtful comedy shows the day-to-day reality of a religious calling: 'It's f***ing hard!'

Cuban Fury - review

Nimble-footed stars such as Nick Frost, Chris O'Dowd and Olivia Colman step lively in a comedy that doesn't quite fill the floor.

Radio Times review

You've tittered at QI. You've guffawed at Would I Lie to You? So how will your sides cope with a brazen fusion of both formats?

That's obviously the thinking behind this derivative panel show, in which Lee Mack asks a team of celebrity guests to provide hard evidence for their seemingly outlandish claims. This week's unlikely facts include: dogs can "catch" their owners' yawns; shrimps are fitter than humans; and an adult male will never be shorter than his mother.

Padded out with pop-science facts, whimsical practical tests and based in a weirdly cramped, overly busy set - it looks like it's filmed in a stationary drawer - it has the whiff of a project cobbled together during a busy executive lunch. But it passes the time affably.

Mack's guests are Olivia Colman, Rhod Gilbert and Paul Hollywood, who gamely leaves his Bake Off comfort zone to see if it's possible to scale a wall using household vacuum cleaners.