Rebecca Nicholson

Walliams & Friend review

With a skit called Carry On Up the Sexual Harassment Tribunal, this was a very, very silly sketch show. But the weirder things got, the funnier it all was.

An interview with Julia Davis

Certain words come up when you talk about the kinds of comedy Julia Davis stars in, or writes, or sometimes both: goth-diary words like dark, twisted, macabre.

Murder in Successville is ridiculous. Each week it takes a real-life celebrity, and places them in the middle of a fictional murder mystery, which they must help to solve. Successville, where these crimes take place, is populated by celebrities doing ordinary jobs, only these "celebrities" are impressionists doing their versions of those celebrities doing ordinary jobs. It's part sketch show, part structured reality show and part quiz show. Its jokes are largely crude and scatological. Everyone is on the verge of laughter throughout.

In the opening episode, the celebrity stooge is Jamie Laing from Made in Chelsea. I've never seen Made in Chelsea, so he well could have been the impressionist's version of Jamie Laing, though a passing colleague saw him on my screen, confirmed it was the real Jamie Laing and declared him to be "the worst". Laing plays a rookie cop tasked with cracking the murder of Strictly Come Dancing judge Bruno Tonioli, who, in Successville, is a chef married to chief suspect Darcy Bussell. Neither are played by themselves. Local gangsters Alan Carr and Harry Styles are not themselves, either. Nor, disappointingly, is ballistics expert Taylor Swift actually played by Taylor Swift.

This is a very, very silly show. For the first half I was torn between feeling extremely pleased something so anarchic and daft had been commissioned by the BBC in the first place, and willing it to be just that little bit funnier, and less reliant on jokes about bumming. But eventually, it got me. Laing gamely plays along as he is directed towards increasingly absurd situations, such as interrogating Alan Carr's underworld "sister" Jimmy Carr, who communicates only in that seal-bark laugh.

If Laing really is a villain in Made in Chelsea, then Murder in Successville is a remarkable act of rehabilitation for him. He just can't stop giggling, and it's helplessly contagious. This is the same silly joy that comes from sitcom blooper reels, or performers corpsing during live comedy, or trying not to laugh when you're getting told off. It's not particularly sophisticated, but it is surprisingly charming, and perhaps some of those remaining BBC Three-on-TV viewers might have stumbled across it and been charmed by it, too.

There are surprises, though less charm, in new comedy from Channel 4's Bugsplat!, from Drop the Dead Donkey and Outnumbered writer Guy Jenkin. Bugsplat! is set on an English RAF base, where drone pilots coordinate attacks on far-away targets. The press of one big red button in a converted shipping container in a field annihilates enemies and any number of innocent "collaterals". This brutal premise forms the basis of George Brant's fierce monologue Grounded, which is currently running off-Broadway with Anne Hathaway as its drone pilot. But the treatment here is more daft than harrowing, reaching for dark humour in the fundamental absurdity of the situation. That is not, in itself, offensive, though the jokes never quite land, hovering uncomfortably between trying to be both cautious and outrageous.

In its opening scene, a target vehicle is tracked by a drone as it moves from wilderness to town to marketplace to an orphanage for blind children, the collateral damage of any attack becoming increasingly unacceptable. "It'd kill 50 children!" one observer objects. "Health and safety gone mad," grumbles splat-hungry pilot Lexi (a caustic Lauren O'Neil), as she hovers over the button. Eventually, she gets to press it. She celebrates with a drink - they've taken out the bad guy. Only they haven't, and the real bad guy tricked them, and WikiLeaks is all over it and what appeared to be an operational triumph quickly turns into a PR disaster, particularly since someone filmed them dithering over the approach.

Vincent Franklin, last seen in Russell T Davies's Cucumber, plays exasperated Wing Commander Barry, who tries his best to manage this messy cross between a bureaucratic nightmare and "Xbox shit". But for a modern sitcom dealing with such current subjects, it feels strangely old-fashioned. Were it not for the subject matter, it is easy to imagine it airing on ITV's 9pm Friday-night spot. There are touches of wit - I enjoyed the use of "to decease" as a verb - but the obvious problem is that the real situation is so tragic and absurd that it requires razor-sharp satire to slice it open. The Thick of It, which is a clear point of comparison, worked because its writing was ruthless. This doesn't go far enough. When Fiona Button's PR manager Gina attempts to take control of the disaster - "What's a cock-up but a triumph that hasn't been spun right?" - you're left wishing Malcolm Tucker would come and show them how it's all done.

Review: Murder in Successville, Bugsplat!

Reviews of BBC Three's improvised comedy and Channel 4's latest sitcom pilot.

Over on Sky Arts 1, some light relief from Psychobitches, one of the best new comedies on TV last year, though given its tiny home, few people actually got to see it. It's a sketch show set in a therapist's office, in which famous (dead) women from history tell psychiatrist Rebecca Front their troubles. The first series was a knockout - Julia Davis played a wailing hybrid of Pam Ayres and Sylvia Plath; the Brontë sisters were foul-mouthed, filthy puppets obsessed with sex, and Sharon Horgan played a campy Eva Peron, who clung on to her bottles of "boobles". It was silly, and odd, and very funny.

This second series is almost as good, though it feels more like a traditional sketch show and is slightly patchier, perhaps due to the sheer number of writers (I counted 12 on the credits for the first episode of this double bill, and seven on the second). In the best sketch, Kathy Burke and Reece Shearsmith play the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret as crude and grotesque, glugging down booze as Burke repeatedly rejects her on-screen offspring with delicious cruelty. Morgana Robinson joins the cast to play a sloppy Anna Nicole Smith - hers is a masterclass in physical comedy - and there's a musical skit featuring Unity, Decca and Nancy Mitford, as imagined by Horgan, Samantha Spiro and Sophie Ellis Bexter. In a sketch the Mail has already called "hideous", Michelle Gomez has gone from Doctor Who's Missy to an even more terrifying villain, playing Thatcher as a Hannibal Lecter-style monster, incapable of love. It's at its finest when it's upsetting the establishment, and it relishes its naughtiness.

The second episode was less sharp. Perhaps, given its hyperactive pace, it works better in single doses. But I loved Horgan as Carmen Miranda - "Of course I'm on fucking drugs" - and Sheridan Smith as a mute Sleeping Beauty, whose endless sleep has an ulterior motive. And anything that gets Kathy Burke back on our screens, even for a few minutes, is well worth our attention.

Stewart Lee's Alternative Comedy Experience offers 25 minutes of understated joy over on Comedy Central. Now three episodes into its second series, it's a grottier, grimier Live At The Apollo, without the necessary blockbuster blandness of John Bishop or Michael McIntyre.

Lee talks to comedians about their comedy - more interesting than it sounds, because of the calibre of people involved - which is then interspersed with short excerpts from stand-up sets, filmed at Edinburgh's tiny pub-like venue The Stand, giving it a brilliantly raucous, ramshackle feel.

Tuesday's episode saw Susan Calman, Josie Long, Kevin Eldon and David O'Doherty performing, with O'Doherty - a particular delight. If you've ever wondered how someone can do witty nostalgia about long-dead technology without sounding like a Buzzfeed list, then track O'Doherty's set down as a matter of urgency.

Babylon - TV review

For the 90 minutes that Danny Boyle's comedy-drama pilot was on I laughed - and despaired too.

John Oliver on his new HBO project

The British comedian John Oliver has opened up about his acclaimed stint on the topical US show, and said his new programme will be merely 'me, talking about stuff'.

Channel 4's sitcom Man Down has settled into a pleasingly puerile groove, and joined BBC One's hit Mrs Brown's Boys in representing slapstick comedy. Here, teacher Greg Davies gave the nativity play a contemporary twist with the nightmare robotic future of Scrooge 3,000, but it was Rik Mayall as his dad, working his way through the increasingly unpleasant "12 scares of Christmas", who stole the show - and, potentially, planted ideas for potentially fatal practical jokes in the minds of cooped-up families everywhere.