Paul Whitelaw

The Brockmans are the most convincing sitcom family since the Royles. The last episode in the latest series of Outnumbered was, as usual, perfectly pitched between exquisite gag-packed comedy and fleeting moments of unsentimental family drama.

But even when dealing with Pete's drunken indiscretion with another woman, or little Karen's road accident, writers Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin never lost sight of their comic intent. Instead, Karen expressed disappointment that dad had broken his wedding vows - "the vicar's going to be furious" - before harassing a kindly nurse with tacit threats of legal action if her jab hurt more than just "a tiny bit" as promised.

The subtly touching closing scene, in which the realistically reunited parents left hospital with a bandaged Karen, as she wittered on delightfully, said more about enduring family ties than any number of schmaltzy homilies.

Although the youngest kids in Outnumbered are exasperating, they're also unaffectedly charming and clearly far funnier and more real than any other children in sitcom history. Partly improvised by child actors Ramona Marquez and Daniel Roche, their skewed righteousness, ruthless inquisitiveness and semi-logical flights of fancy appear to be an endless source of inspired comedy. I just can't work out whether it's a good thing or not that one of the funniest comedy performers in Britain is a partially scripted nine-year-old girl.

For fans of excruciatingly painful television, don't miss Channel 4's Comedy Roasts in which Bruce Forsyth, Sharon Osbourne and Chris Tarrant are ritually insulted by visibly uncomfortable guests including Jonathan Ross, Sean Lock and Jack Dee. A longstanding American showbiz tradition, these British attempts are stilted and embarrassing. The Osbourne edition in particular is like a glimpse into Hell.

This semi-improvised sitcom continues to amaze in that it is an almost unheard-of example of a middle-class family sitcom that's actually very funny. Caustic, believable and refreshingly unsentimental, it boasts more good gags per episode than most mainstream BBC sitcoms manage in a lifetime.

A large part of its success, of course, is due to the natural performances of its child stars, particularly nine-year-old Ramona Marquez as the maddeningly inquisitive Karen. In this typically joke-packed opening episode, she drags the family - nominally led by selfless straight-men, Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner - through a hectic historical daytrip to central London aimed at gathering research for her school project. She dismisses people who throw money into fountains as "idiots" and plays spot-the-lesbian with her anarchic brother Ben. Once again, it makes child-rearing look like an unyielding nightmare, but it's all the more hilarious for that.

Thank God for Burnistoun, a comedy that's actually funny. This BBC Scotland sketch show - which I've warmed to after initial uncertainty - is infused with the kind of invention and sheer likeability. Its writers/stars Iain Connell and Robert Florence are a font of agreeably daft ideas, my favourite this week being the guys trying to outdo each other with tales of their old gangster drinking buddies. More please.

Last night I witnessed a small piece of television history when BBC3 aired, without question, the worst comedy pilot they have ever made. Bearing in mind this channel has produced more abysmal comedy pilots than a flying school for suicidal clowns, that's quite an achievement.

The aptly named Laughter Shock was quite stunning in its awfulness, so much so that it almost felt like an angry satire on everything that's wrong with modern British comedy. But no, it was real. Horribly, painfully real.

This jaw-dropping travesty was intended as a showcase for over a dozen young comedians, all labouring under the misapprehension that all you need for a successful career in stand-up is amplification and a larynx. Performing live in front of a trapped audience, this smorgasbord of hacks were each given just a minute to make their mark. This, clearly, is an insane way to present stand-up comedy on television, but in this case it was a blessing.

Even in heavily edited form, they were among the most atrocious stand-ups I have ever seen. Lowlights included a loud woman talking solely about her hair, an idiot doing an impersonation of a dinosaur (because his last girlfriend was so old), a "token middle-class white boy" illustrating his cleverness by using the word "semantically" and sneering at people's Amazon reviews, and a hopeless berk performing an excruciating routine about the many hilarious uses for a towel. That he did this while aping the vocal mannerisms of Michael McIntyre merely compounded the horror.

As if all of this wasn't bad enough, the stand-up was interspersed with amateurish sketches ranging from charmless whimsy to uninspired riffs on youth culture and race, and a truly appalling attempt at Chris Morris-like edginess set in a woman's lavatory.

Comedy, like any craft, requires practice and experience before it can be mastered, so if I was feeling charitable I'd concede that perhaps these newcomers were simply ill-prepared for such exposure. Having said that, none of them showed the slightest bit of potential, and I'm staggered that even BBC3 - where new comedy frequently goes to die - thought this fit for broadcast.

The comedy hell continued with Life of Riley, which feels like a parody of the kind of bland, mechanical, family sitcom they supposedly don't make anymore. It even has a hackneyed punning title in which the protagonist's name is inserted into an everyday phrase.

I don't know what depresses me most about this dire Caroline Quentin vehicle, the endless procession of arthritic gags (mother on telephone to stepson: "Danny it's Maddy... Maddy?... I'm married to your father, yes."), its healthy ratings, or the clinically treated laugh track. It's like being mocked by the cackles of the dead. At least Outnumbered is back soon to show how it should be done.

TV review: Comedy Exchange

The comedians in this first episode were Eugene Mirman and panel show doyen Phill Jupitus, who admittedly had more to prove, given that he hadn't performed stand-up in almost a decade. Judging by his hackneyed material (yes, there were fat jokes), that's a blessing for us all.

I approached A League of Their Own, a new sports quiz hosted by James Corden, much as Superman would approach a toilet hewn from Kryptonite. I have next to no interest in sport, Corden is an inescapable irritant and the concept of athletes jousting for giggles is dismal enough on A Question of Sport, let alone a wacky Sky 1 panel show. Sure enough, this is an awful, lacklustre, derivative programme full of blokey banter, laboured whimsy, and Corden, with his one joke ("I'm fat!"), acting, as ever, like a noisy class clown desperately straining for attention. Or, if you prefer, an over-excited sea lion clapping for his supper. He won't mind. He knows he's fat and how funny that is.

A starring vehicle for venerable Scottish comedy scribes Iain Connell and Robert Florence (whose credits include the unfairly overlooked Gregor Fisher sitcom Empty), Burnistoun is an amiable yet decidedly unremarkable sketch show. This is disappointing as they are clearly talented.

But at least they have the courage to produce sketches dependent on verbal playfulness and ideas rather than repeated catchphrases or lazy cruelty.

Their hit rate may be scarce (although I liked the parochial Scottish MP unwittingly elevated to the role of PM), but I cautiously welcome any sketch show in the approximate tradition of, say, Absolutely over the abysmal Little Britain. Maybe it will improve, although the idea is normally that you put some of your best material in the first episode...

As proven by this amiable documentary, hallowed practitioners of the musical spoof include acts as diverse as Bill Bailey, The Two Ronnies, Tom Lehrer, Monty Python and Victoria Wood, who's breathlessly funny Let's Do It is one of the greatest comedy songs ever written, and I'll mud-wrestle anyone who says otherwise.

All of which poses the question: why can't all channels be as good as this?