Olivia Colman

Of course, for many of us, this week was not just some normal, ho-hum weeky week: as unremarkable as April 7-14, say, or, I dunno, February 19-26 inclusive. No. This week was Peep Show week. The return of the sitcom locked in a permanent, and fabulous, battle of champions with The Thick of It to be the definitive show of what we must, still, sighingly, refer to as "the Noughties". Peep and Thick are like the John McEnroe and Björn Borg of comedy - sometimes one triumphs, sometimes the other, but for miles and miles around there's no real competition. No competition at all. That one writer - Jesse Armstrong - works on both lends the very real possibility that he might be the funniest person in Britain.

I'm not in the habit of suggesting that the Government should forcibly take sperm samples from scriptwriters, and keep them in a cryogenic vault, in the event of a "comedy emergency" in which everyone funny dies, and we need to restock Britain's gag-writing ability with a concerted breeding programme. But, you know, it might be worth bearing in mind.

As series six starts, Peep Show's profile - once so "cult" that its future looked perilous - has never been higher. The inexorable rise of David Mitchell - thinking lady's beaky sex-penguin du jour - means that even the show's first trailer was subject to mass excitement on Twitter. When we last saw Jez (Robert Webb) and Mark (David Mitchell), they had just found out that either one of them might be the father of Sophie's (Olivia Colman) forthcoming baby. This is an usually "big" plot for the show - after all, even when Super Hans (Matt King) got addicted to crack ("That stuff is more-ish!"), it didn't really take up more than six or seven gags.

Within minutes of the first episode opening, more "big" stuff has happened - Mark has got the terminally feckless Jez a job at his company, JLB - but then JLB goes bust. The sexy business dick Alan Johnson (Paterson Joseph, playing one of the all-time amazing sitcom characters) comes to deliver the bad news: "I just got in from Aberdeen. JLB no longer exists. Thank you, Britain, and good night!" and then is driven away at top speed in a company car.

"That's the last Beemer out of Saigon," Mark sighs. The problem was that, as the episode went on, I noted, with mounting terror, that I wasn't really ... laughing. Yeah, there were a couple of nodding smiles, and the "Beemer" line got what would, on a Laugh Graph, be called "a snorty chuckle", but ... the usual, glorious, abandoned fug of a) borderline hysteria and b) intense emotional anguish, caused by minutely observed cases of total t***tishness, wasn't descending.

I was looking a cataclysm in the face: that Peep Show might have "gone off". We've all got to stop being funny some time. Maybe this was their time. Maybe it was all. Over. Or - maybe it was just a bad opening episode? So I rang people. I blagged. I cried. I sent a courier that cost £38. I got episode 2 sent over, and sat down to watch it in a state of pre-emptive tension rivalled only by the day before my C-section. And oh, thank God - episode 2 is one of the best episodes yet. Mark and Jez have a debate about the temperature setting on a boiler that is less like dialogue, more like an MRI scan of the idiot human brain. Then, later, Jez gets to deliver the line, "I'm a feminist - so I believe women should have any mad thing they want." It's all going to be OK. It's all still amazing. When The Thick of It comes back next month, the skies will be, once again, filled with the boom and clatter of their glorious rivalry.

How nice to see that, despite an increasing television profile for their sketch show, David Mitchell and Robert Webb have not turned their back on Radio 4. This new six-part series also includes something that was dearly missing from the last TV series - the effortless comic delights of Olivia Colman.

Beautiful People is enjoyable enough to make a point of watching it, especially for Olivia Colman's sublimely brilliant performance as Simon's bonkers mum.

I like Beautiful People, it has a really nice nostalgic sheen to it that, while not laugh out loud funny, is certainly watchable in a quirky way. Simon and best buddy Kylie are in raptures at the prospect of headlining the school's production of Joseph, and hysteria ensues as they prepare to audition. The best thing about Beautiful People is the divine Olivia Colman, who shows her range here beyond being a foil for Mitchell and Webb.

Beautiful People comes running on to the screen and licks you all over. It's a Labrador of a sitcom, so eager to please it's exhausting. It's like The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, except camp. Screamingly, thrashingly, life-threateningly camp.

Although there are many lovely moments where it seems to revive - I am afraid that it ultimately dies of camp. Such a pity! Some of the two schoolboys' dialogue is priceless (aspiring intellectuals, they pronounce 'epitome' to rhyme with 'gnome') and little Layton Williams as the lead's best friend Kyle (or as he insists on being known, Kylie) is just brilliant, a star in the making. Olivia Colman as the mother is fabulously warm. There are some killer lines (Two fashion pointers: never wear nylon, and never wear nylon bought for you by a blind person).

But as with Ugly Betty, the problem is that it tries too hard to bring a camp aesthetic overground; to deliver a mainstream version of camp when by definition camp is a secret, niche sensibility.

As cheekily camp as Simon Doonan's recollections of his barmy family are, Jonathan Harvey's innocent adaptation looks oddly as though it should be broadcast in the middle of the afternoon.

The 13-year-old Doonan is gleefully played by Luke Ward-Wilkinson, who introduces us to his dipsomaniacal mum Debbie (Peep Show's Olivia Colman) and his camp best friend Kyle (Layton Williams).

But then that, perhaps, is the best achievement of this likeable, if light, comedy drama: it manages to make the adventures of a tender, cross-dressing teenager look like normal children's TV.

A promising new sitcom, based on the best-selling memoirs of Simon Noonan, the now creative director of Barney's department store in New York. Growing up in suburban Reading of the 1990s, the young Simon dreams of escaping a dreary existence that is seriously lacking in glamour. Where, oh where, are the beautiful people? Quirky and fun, this might just do the business - the cast includes Olivia Colman, Aidan McCardle and Meera Syal.

Olivia Colman Interview

Olivia Colman moves from Peep Show to play mum in the mildly potty Beautiful People. The Times gets acquainted.

Not only is Hut 33 one of the very few radio shows set in a shedlike atmosphere, it's also very funny.

I'd heartily recommend tuning in as the first series was a hoot and the cast, including Robert Bathurst and Olivia Colman, are excellent.