Phelim O'Neill

There will come a time soon, after the cost is tallied and the results examined, when the 2012 London Olympics will be no laughing matter. Until then, it's fair game. Writer/director John Morton previously helmed the great People Like Us, and here the tone is similar and the standard just as high.

Set in the Olympics Deliveries Committee, complete with dreadful logo, we meet the excellent cast - Hugh Bonneville, Olivia Coleman, Jessica Hynes, Vincent Franklin - as they prepare to relaunch their website.

A terrific start, mostly stolen by Hynes's spot-on PR agent.

"Television's job is to leave us more alert than it found us." Yes, someone actually said that. Don't worry, it was a long time ago. The second part of this documentary focuses on the arrival of television. So many shows, particularly Sunday Night at the London Palladium, were variety shows broadcast live, so TV had an immediate and seemingly inexhaustible supply of seasoned, professional performers. But it also meant that people no longer had to go out to enjoy entertainment - and the effect on the variety theatres was devastating. Great anecdotes and clips of a long-gone era.

From the 1950s to 1966, Arthur Haynes was the biggest name in British television comedy. He followed the usual path for comedians from this era, working variety shows and joining the army entertainment division before finding stardom on independent television. His comedy dealt with puncturing the pomposity of the ruling classes. Paul Merton talks to Haynes's old comedy partner, Nicholas Parsons, about him.

Time to forget all your troubles, kick back, relax and laugh at a show you probably saw back in April. The O2 Arena plays host to literally quite a few comedians in a show put on to raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity; so even if the likes of Jack Whitehall, Jason Manford, Michael McIntyre and James Corden aren't funny then at least some good will come from this. There are plenty of good turns here as well from David Mitchell, Jo Brand, Sean Lock and Kevin Eldon.

As if it wasn't hard to enough to embrace a show where the lead ends each episode doused in some bodily fluid or other, this week Todd Margaret's cluelessness about jolly old England sees him draped in a BNP T-shirt. David Cross, it appears, will do anything to get a laugh and most of the time his total lack of fear pays off. This week, Todd searches for a celebrity to endorse his toxic energy drink, resulting in a special guest appearance that must be completely baffling to the US half of this co-production.

Robert Llewellyn's online show comes to TV. The premise is simplicity itself: Llewellyn drives a guest around in his car and has a nice chat. He picks up comedians Rufus Hound and Jason Manford (who uses this as a money-saving way to get dropped off at his job at The One Show). There's no dangerous driving, and the only tension comes when they wait for a traffic light to change. It's pleasant with no attempt to "sex it up". The opposite, thankfully, of car crash television.

This week's new DVD and Blu-ray: Four Lions

Four Lions is a film you really need to see more than once.

TV is full of comedy quiz shows, but the sheer silliness of Shooting Stars separates it from the bullying boys' clubs its peers regularly descend into. The lack of ego is refreshing, Vic and Bob are always only too willing to shame themselves to service a gag - as seen in Vic's wardrobe malfunction tonight when he dances. Angelos Epithemiou's hard work as the replacement for George Dawes pays off with some great moments, including a killer off-the-cuff insult at the expense of David Gest.

For those worried that they'd not seen much of James Corden on their screens recently, relax, he's back. He hosts the umpteenth return of Buzzcocks - along with Noel Fielding, who's back as a team captain. The quick-witted Simon Amstell is gone, so now it's a revolving-door host policy, with the ability to read an autocue and laugh generously at unfunny gags by Phill Jupitus the only qualifications that seem to be required. Fine, anything that keeps Mark Lamarr from clawing his way back on to our screens.

The long-lost 1969 comedy The Bed Sitting Room is finally given the spotlight it deserves. Based on a rather freeform post-apocalyptic play by Spike Milligan, this is rightfully regarded as something of a missing link in UK comedy. Under Richard Lester's inventive direction, Britain is reduced to around a dozen characters following a nuclear "misunderstanding" and the population dwindles further as radioactivity causes people to mutate into parrots, wardrobes and the titular cheap accommodation - yes, Spike Milligan clearly did write this. It's a bleak and funny mix of music hall gags and Samuel Beckett-style existentialism with a cast including the great Michael Hordern, Arthur Lowe, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Marty Feldman.