Paul Whitelaw

The Function Room is a cheerfully traditional and often very funny studio sitcom set in a pub, and starring a host of familiar comedy actors including The Vicar of Dibley's James Fleet, The League of Gentlemen's Reece Shearsmith, The Inbetweeners' Blake Harrison, The Fast Show's Simon Day (once again playing a pub know-it-all) and every-comedy-of-the-last-fifteen-years' Kevin Eldon.

The sort of uproariously gag-heavy sitcom that encourages deserved rounds of applause from its studio audience, it's definitely a step in the right direction for Channel 4, and if they have any sense - which they don't - they'll commission 
a series.

The deterioration of Channel 4's comedy output is indicative of an overall slide in standards at C4, a sorry state of affairs that its Funny Fortnight season inadvertently illustrates. Boasting over 30 hours of new pilots, one-off specials and numerous repeats of former glories, it does at least offer some glimmers of hope, while at the same time neatly encapsulating everything that's wrong with C4 these days.

The worst offender by far is I'm Spazticus, a jaw-droppingly witless and misconceived hidden prank show in which disabled performers humiliate able-bodied members of the public.

Its title - taken from an Ian Dury protest song, but shorn of its original context for maximum shock value - is the least offensive thing about this disaster. What point is it trying to make exactly? That disabled people can be involved in woefully uninspired prank shows too, especially ones that define them solely by their disability? Wow, what a heartening message. Or, seeing as its flustered 'victims' are well-meaning innocents, is it saying that able-bodied people will go out of their way to help disabled people no matter how absurd the situation? Well, that's good isn't it?

Only one prank - a spoof vox pop in which members of the public are asked to choose which disability they'd least like to have - could reasonably be taken as pointed satire, although all it really proves is that dim people will partake in any old crock if there's a camera involved. But hasn't Chris Morris already made that point, albeit in a more imaginative way?

This is what C4, hosts of the 2012 Paralympics, regards as inclusiveness: a comedy show starring disabled people in which they're reduced to comedy props. The producers would doubtless pull a Gervais - an unfortunate phrase, but let's not dwell - and argue that it isn't problematic as they're willing participants and in on the joke. But all that proves is that some disabled actors are as desperate for work as able-bodied ones.

Actually, maybe that's the hidden genius of I'm Spazticus. Maybe it's a cleverly subversive comment on how Channel 4 will exploit anyone for profit, whatever their physical ability. And that, when you think about it, actually makes them the most trailblazing equal-opportunities employer in television. All hail C4, defender 
of minorities!

Whenever Sky Atlantic isn't busy importing disappointing HBO dramas, it likes to concern itself with producing vehicles for talented comedians that very few viewers will actually watch. Their latest is Adam Buxton's Bug, a straightforward adaptation of his popular series of live shows in which he plays innovative music videos, and parodies the comments left beneath them online.

On paper it sounds like the laziest idea in the world - cheap TV writ small - until you factor in Buxton's natural wit and charm. Sarcastic but never cruel, his mockery of the pompous, insensitive and grammatically wayward idiots who congregate on the bottom half of the internet feels entirely justified, especially when tempered with a pleasing assault of childish silliness.

Mostly stationed behind his laptop, Buxton displays a near heroic willingness to behave as stupidly as possible in pursuit of laughs. A sunny riot of daft voices, songs, and tortuous puns, he's an underrated clown who deserves to be better known. Sadly, I doubt that this slight yet often very funny show will bring him that attention.

Kathy Burke's Walking and Talking is a charming semi-autobiographical comedy which adroitly captures the certainty and confusion of adolescence. Set in [y]979[/y], it follows an ambling conversation between two teenage friends on their way home from school, occasionally interrupted by cameos from Burke herself as a belligerent nun, and cult comedian Jerry Sadowitz as - surely not? - a ranting Glaswegian lunatic. It's a slight yet gently amusing affair.

Alan Partridge: Welcone To The Places in My Life a supremely funny one-off special in which Steve Coogan confirms his renewed mastery of one British comedy's greatest creations.

Kicking off Sky's new Monday night comedy schedule, it follows the embittered broadcaster on a typically banal odyssey through his beloved East Anglia, including visits to his North Norfolk Digital workplace, Norwich Town Hall, the local swimming baths - his butterfly crawl is hysterical - and a field full of sheep where, often for up to 45 minutes, he likes to imagine them as people who've wronged him in the past.

Presented within Alan's fictional universe as a self-financed vanity project, it's packed with the great lines and attention to detail we've come to expect from this character at his best. You know you're on safe ground with a fake documentary where even the credits, captions and graphics are jokes in themselves. And Coogan's performance is impeccable throughout.

Returning to BBC3 four years after her critically-acclaimed sitcom Pulling was axed to make way for 17 more series' of Two Pints of Lager, Sharon Horgan recovers her form with Dead Boss, a satisfyingly silly prison-set sitcom co-written with comedian Holly Walsh.

Beginning with a double-bill, it stars Horgan as Helen, a woman wrongly sentenced to 12 years in the chokey for the murder of her boss. Her thwarted efforts to clear her name and survive within this madhouse form the spine of a likeable farce, which, as directed by The League of Gentlemen's Steve Bendelack, has a cartoonish quality vaguely redolent of that other (good) BBC3 sitcom, Ideal.

Merrily tweaking all the usual prison clichés, it's populated by the likes of a leering Top Dog - notorious for once paper-cutting an inmate to death with a copy of TV Quick - and Jennifer Saunders as a faux-mumsy Governess. In fact the cast is uniformly strong, with Geoffrey McGivern proving particularly amusing as Helen's hopeless lawyer.

It's no Porridge, but Dead Boss still succeeds as an enjoyable streak of assured nonsense.

Simon Amstell as himself beats Matt LeBlanc as himself

Even if one day he becomes the first man to set foot on Mars, Matt LeBlanc will always be better known as "former Friends star Matt LeBlanc".

The late Douglas Adams, upon whose work Dirk Gently is loosely based, once served as script editor during Doctor Who's original run, so the links are inherent anyway. But television really doesn't need another straggle-haired, loose-limbed, people-phobic, geek-chic eccentric solving crazy puzzles with assistance from a more diffident and human sidekick. It's probably only a matter of time before they revive Catweazle starring Ben Whishaw as a sexy nerd wizard in a pin-striped smock (I really shouldn't be giving them any ideas).

Stephen Mangan is fine as Gently, a conceited, bumbling, shabby detective who conducts "tangential investigations" based on his belief in the interconnectedness of all things. But his borderline charming performance isn't enough to rescue this micro-budgeted production from resembling a CBBC version of Sherlock.

The gritty cheapness of original BBC4 comedies such as The Thick Of It and Getting On actually works in their favour, as their dark, jittery essence practically demands flat lighting etc. But Dirk Gently, in trying to create a much lighter and more fantastical mood, is ill-served by its cheapo aesthetic.

Everything about it is far too slight: slightly likeable, slightly funny, slightly clever, but never enough to really succeed as either comedy or drama. And while the decision to downplay the science-fiction concepts found in the original books makes sense from a budgetary point of view, it also exacerbates the general feeling of pointlessness. It's just too generic and ordinary. And Douglas Adams was never generic and ordinary.

US Only Fools: lovely jubbly or potential plonker?

Following the recent announcement that Taxi and Back To The Future star Christopher Lloyd has joined the cast of the US remake of Only Fools And Horses - he's playing the Granddad/Uncle Albert substitute, in case you hadn't guessed - it's perhaps time to put aside one's initial reservations and give this project a chance.

Reviving a popular sitcom usually smacks of desperation, but as far as panto reunions go, the first of three new episodes of Absolutely Fabulous is quite good fun, despite the unwelcome intrusion of a desperately over-indulgent studio audience and the embarrassing mugging of Jane Horrocks in a lazily crowd-pleasing cameo.

Jennifer Saunders is probably incapable of delivering a mirthless script, and she's still a terrific comic performer. It also boasts that rarity: a genuinely surprising celebrity cameo.

A plot precis would ruin the central gag, but it remains what it always was: a big, broad, raucous comedy with some agreeably sharp edges. Plus it's perversely pleasing to hear jokes about crack and methadone on BBC1 on Christmas Day, if only because it will annoy people who get annoyed by things like that.