Robert Webb

Robert Webb, actor and comedian, opens the diary he kept when he was 17 for the benefit of host (and comedian) Rufus Hound and an enthralled audience. His entries include one about going to a party and kissing a girl he didn't really fancy. I always listen to this programme, now in its fourth series. But I often wonder whether a real conversation with the diaries' authors (who have included Meera Syal, Sheila Hancock, Michael Winner and Julian Clary) would produce something more satisfying than some wisecracks from Hound and lots of easy audience laughs.

WILTY remains fresh enough to stake a claim as the funniest panel show on TV.

It helps that the team captains are perfect in their roles, each bringing a specific style of humour to proceedings: David Mitchell's logical dissection of someone's story can sometimes get wearisome, but usually it's a delight to see him analyse things with such comical scrutiny; while opponent Lee Mack plays looser with the rules and manages to create a feeling of uncertainty because he adopts a level of ineptness in his truth-telling that might sometimes be a double-bluff. There's also comedy mined from how middle-class southerner Mitchell and working class northerner Mack (now that's a double-act name, Robert Webb!) are from different backgrounds and upbringings.

The only problem facing WILTY is that, as time goes on, you wonder if Mitchell and Mack will run out of stories that are sufficiently funny/bizarre enough to sound false. Not that the show relies on their stories alone, but I hope they each have good anecdotes left to squeeze out before everything they say becomes a lie because they've exhausted the truth. This is a problem that doesn't affect the rotation of guests, thankfully.

Now in its sixth series, WILTY? remains fresh enough to stake a claim as the funniest panel show on TV. This is probably because it's more of a parlour gameshow than most others in the genre-which are often quiz-based because it's easier to attach scripted jokes to that format. WILTY?'s more like Call My Bluff, only with humorous anecdotes replacing esoteric words. Two teams of three celebrities tell each other personal stories (sometimes with the aid of props) in order to trick the opposing side into thinking the yarn is gospel truth or a barefaced lie. More often than not, this makes for a highly amusing half-hour of trickery and repartee.

It helps that the team captains are perfect in their roles, each bringing a specific style of humour to proceedings: David Mitchell's logical dissection of someone's story can sometimes get wearisome, but usually it's a delight to see him analyse things with such comical scrutiny; while opponent Lee Mack plays looser with the rules and manages to create a feeling of uncertainty because he adopts a level of ineptness in his truth-telling that might sometimes be a double-bluff. There's also comedy mined from how middle-class southerner Mitchell and working class northerner Mack (now that's a double-act name, Robert Webb!) are from different backgrounds and upbringings.

The only problem facing WILTY? is that, as time goes on, you wonder if Mitchell and Mack will run out of stories that are sufficiently funny/bizarre enough to work. Not that the show relies on their stories alone, but I hope they each have good anecdotes left to squeeze out before everything they say becomes a lie because they've exhausted the truth. This is a problem that doesn't affect the rotation of guests, thankfully.

Robert Webb signs up to be Winnie the Pooh storyteller

Foul-mouthed Peep Show star, Robert Webb, has signed up as the frontman for a new Disney TV show.

The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff is stuffed with plot but gets away with it because that's one of the essential gags. As a spoof of the intricately engineered clockwork of a Dickens novel, full of sudden revelations and shock reversals, it could hardly be any other way. And in any case, it always takes care to have a joke on hand to lubricate every narrative turn. So, when Conceptiva Secret-Past and her daughter Victoria use Primly Tightclench's deportment volumes to bludgeon their way past the baddies you get a quick close-up of the titles they've picked: "How to Hurt a Large Man" and "Self Defence for Girls". I wasn't entirely sure about the first one-off special of Mark Evans's comedy at Christmas, but it's far easier to surrender to its silliness now that it's been sliced up into half-hour portions.

The cast is excellent, with Robert Webb relishing the possibilities for guileless credulity and Tim McInnerny chewing the carpet (in a splendid way) as the dastardly Harmswell Grimstone. At one point last night, he paused in the middle of a triumphant cackle as if something was missing, stroked his upper lip and said pensively: "I really must grow a moustache to twirl." I enjoyed the trial scene a lot too, in which Harmswell arrived understandably confident that he would prevail. The judge was called Harshmore Grimstone and he'd taken advantage of the immemorial right of every Englishman to be tried by a jury of his cousins.

The enjoyably affectionate Dickensian sitcom comes to an end tonight, and let's hope it's not the last we see of Robert Webb's good-natured Jedrington Secret-Past. Here Jedrington is brought back to sobriety by Servegood and reunited with his wife Conceptiva (Katherine Parkinson). And together they take the evil Harmswell Grimstone (Tim McInnerny) to court to demand the return of the business and their daughter.

Pramface, a sitcom about a 16-year-old boy who accidentally gets a girl pregnant, is one of a series of new comedies recently commissioned by BBC Three, having axed most of their old shows. All I can say is that I hope the rest of the new output is better than this.

To give you an idea of where I stand on it, I laughed once. The laugh itself came from a somewhat old-hack gag about a boy "pleasuring himself" and "reaching climax" as his mother enters the room.

Nothing original to it, apart from the fact he was listening to a sex audio tape of his own devising, which was set to play the theme from Top Gear at the critical moment. Now, when I wrote about comedy in Top Gear last week, that's not quiet how I envisioned it. Still it's better than seeing one of those three presenters doing that act (and I apologise for putting that rather disturbing image into your head right now).

There were several problems with Pramface for me. I didn't like most of the characters; there was too much incidental music for my liking; and in terms of the gross-out comedy it appears to be going for I've seen much funnier examples elsewhere. Give me Robert Webb in Peep Show eating a half-cooked dog leg any day of the week.

Behind those stick-on whiskers, Robert Webb's innocent, ­dim-witted face has got "gullible sucker" written all over it.

And, as the Dickensian spoof returns, Bleak Old Shop proprietor Jedrington Secret-Past and his family are about to be catapulted into a world of untold wealth thanks to a business opportunity that sounds almost too good to be true.

While last year's Christmas special was full of lots of soft, wordy humour that showed off its radio roots, the first of this ­new BBC2 three-parter takes a more ­straightforward route to the viewers' funny bone.

And if you don't laugh at The Apprentice and Tesco gags then there's really ­something wrong with you. Katherine Parkinson is wonderful as Jedrington's wife Conceptiva, who is being taunted (Lady Dedlock-style) about her very own secret past.

Her insistence on doing everything without any help from her new servants is a lovely detail, while Waterloo Road's Sarah Hadland pops up, quite literally tonight, as a very different kind of teacher to what we've seen before.

This sitcom may represent the height of ­silliness, but it's also very clever.

Robert Webb and Katherine Parkinson return for three new episodes of the rip-snorting historical romp that puts a banger up Dickens. Now over his festive difficulties at debtors' prison, Jedrington Secret-Past (Webb) begins a joint business venture with the innocuously named Harmswell Grimstone (Tim McInnerny) and Jedrington's wife Conceptiva (Parkinson) receives a distressing letter which threatens to send her even barmier than that treacle addiction. It's demented, gag-jammed fun. Above all, this shop sells that most old-fashioned of commodities - proper jokes.

This Dickens spoof revolving around Jedrington - Robert Webb's upright Victorian shopkeeper - first aired as a one-off seasonal indulgence at Christmas. But now - with a plot that sees Jedrington involved with an evil business man as his wife Conceptiva (Katherine Parkinson) struggles to face up to her 'Secret Past' extended over three episodes - it feels drawn out. You sense the series makers straining for some of Blackadder's period irreverence (Tim McInnerny is on hand in support), but the results are like an overlong sketch from That Mitchell And Webb Look or, even worse, a Footlights show, circa 1984. A few good gags aside - such as the Oxford Emotional Dictionary that Jedrington consults to decipher his wife's womanly whims - there's only so many times you can laugh at these quaint Victorians.