Roger Allam

There are some things you really shouldn't laugh at, like Matt Lucas sporting an enormous pubic wig and querying 'can I pull this off?' or jokes that depend on punning the name Horst Draper ('are you fit to mount a steed?'). But there was something so cheerily daft about Krod Mandoon And The Flaming Sword Of Fire that my sides were split.

It helped that the likes of Lord Of The Rings, Doctor Who and swords 'n' sandals epics such as 300 are ripe for a cheeky rip-off. If you take those kinds of capers deadly seriously then you'd best give Krod a wide berth. But if you enjoy fantasy adventure but wish they weren't so stuck up their own allegories then Krod, complete with its festival of umlauts, is right up your alley.

Buffed-up ex-EastEnder urchin Sean Maguire has carved out a surprising niche as a leather loinclothed spoof action hero - hey, it's a niche - and Krod is a blood brother to the muscle-bound hunk he played in Meet The Spartans. But this time with a much better script. Muscles popping out of his jerkin, Maguire's Krod is a new man in rebel hero's clothing, fretting about hostile work environments and political correctness when he should be sticking it to the bad guy. He makes a fine foil to deliciously evil Lucas, who has a big, bouncy ball as the evil Dongalor.

Subtle it isn't but Kröd works because, though this is satire drawn with a broad brush, there's still a strong story and juicy characters to sink your teeth into. Peppered with neat cameos (The Thick Of It fans will relish Roger Allam and Alex MacQueen taking turns at stealing scenes) and awash with saucy sorcery, it's the best rubbish comedy to come along in dark ages.

Here's a new sitcom that does for sword-and-sorcery adventures what Red Dwarf did for sci-fi. Set in an ancient empire, it stars Sean Maguire as Krod, a well-toned but clueless rebel warrior with an ill-assorted retinue - a sorcerer who can't do magic, a clumsy slave and a girlfriend who seduces baddies more readily than Krod would like. (Feminism hasn't got very far in this version of Middle Earth.) Their enemy is the evil but inept chancellor Dongalor, a part Matt Lucas plays with such glee it lifts the whole show several feet off the ground. The jokes mostly come from hearing workplace jargon in a medieval setting. In the best scene, Dongalor stabs the wrong rebellious courtier by mistake: "I thought we were going to get names carved in the back of the chairs? Did that not happen? Let's make that an action item, shall we?" he says, before sending out for juice and muffins. There are broader gags that will probably work better if you've been to the pub first, including a running bestiality gag around a character called Horst Draper, and a rebel general (Roger Allam) who turns gay after a spell in the castle dungeons. But there's just enough finesse to justify comparisons with the likes of classic film The Princess Bride.

The 2007 special edition of the black political satire is packed with blood-drawingly sharp observations and ruthless, brilliant dialogue. And a lot of laughs. We eavesdrop on Peter Mannion (Roger Allam) a bemused politician who wonders if he's out of step with the modern world. Can he still call yobboes 'yobboes', for instance? Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) and his ferocious sidekick Jamie (Paul Higgins) and back too (hooray!) with language that would make a northern rugby league team blush.

Comedian Will Smith (not to be confused with the American rapper and film star) has co-written this new sitcom in which he stars as himself. Reaching the age of 35 has depressed him at how little he has achieved. After all, he says, Christ had died and risen again by the age of 33, an observation which gives you a notion of the size of Will's fragile ego. So he draws in to this scenario his fictional godfather Peter (played by superb Roger Allam) who each week will invite a special guest to advise him on some perplexing aspect of his life.

Will Smith is one of those people who's always seemed middle-aged, despite being young. But now, he's turned 35 and begun to stress... Such is the setup for Smith's new sitcom, also starring Roger Allam as Will's godfather, Peter.

I gave the show a brief mention a few weeks ago, but now its run has finished, it's time to give Cabin Pressure its due. Its first episode was, I said, flawless. Nothing can be flawless for ever, but the writing and performances in this tight comedy have been exceptional. Let me put it like this: this is the only programme that has kept me close to a radio at 11.30 every Wednesday morning. Never mind Listen Again - you want to catch this as soon as you can.

The setting might be novel - a charter plane, with its skeleton crew of misfits - but the writing obeys pretty much all the necessary rules of classic British sitcom writing, which are simple. In fact, students of the art form would do well to listen to it and take notes. You need little more than an inverted class relationship, a sense of failure, an idiot, and a scary authority figure. What writer John Finnemore has done as well is to add, without tilting things off balance comedy-wise, some depth to the characters.

So the dragon of a boss, played by Stephanie Cole, is revealed to be scared of becoming a 'little old lady'; and the wonderfully supercilious Jeeves/Sergeant Wilson figure, the man who should be Captain but isn't (a perfect performance by Roger Allam), is shown to have weaknesses of his own. The show deserves an award.

The fourth edition of this five-star sitcom opens with what is now a running joke on how the budget airline crew either don't know or don't care about the technicalities of taking off, flying or landing.

I've listened every week, expecting it to crash land but John Finnemore's writing flies in first class. And then there's Roger Allam's performance as the bitter first officer who despises his captain. He is to sarcasm and sneering what Rowan Atkinson's Blackadder was to, well, sarcasm and sneering. Radio sitcom success stories are rare: let's hope this one's in from the long haul.

Well-defined characters, strong casting and great writing do a good sitcom make. Sounds easy, but few get it right. I am, therefore, delighted to announce that this new series is so funny that I listened to it three times in a row, laughing more loudly each time at the lines I now knew were coming.

It's set in a small airline company staffed by two pilots and run by a forbidding 60-something woman who, one of her staff suggests, sharpens rather than brushes her teeth in the morning. Roger Allam's character is on a par with Basil Fawlty as the embittered pilot on his way down.

John Finnemore's new situation comedy has the benefit of a superb cast. Roger Allam, Stephanie Cole and Benedict Cumberbatch give their all to this story of a small charter airline whose single plane is flown by one blasé old know-it-all (Allam) and one fiercely competitive young thruster (Cumberbatch). The whole shebang is owned by a fearsome divorcée (Cole) who has come by the plane in a divorce settlement. Her other inheritance is a dim son (played by the author) whose meek optimism is amply reflected in the laughter from the studio audience.

The fear and joys of flying have been a comedy staple for decades, and every joke it is possible to make has probably been made. The challenge is to tell the old jokes in a new way. So step forward, experienced wordsmith (Dead Ringers, That Mitchell and Webb Sound) John Finnemore, with this new six-part sitcom about a one-plane outfit run by an autocratic divorcée (Stephanie Cole, doing her usual posh bully bit).

Her aircraft has two pilots, one a jaded cynic with a dodgy past who can, though, actually fly (played to worldweary perfection by Roger Allam) and one who seemed to have got his wings through a correspondence college (Benedict Cumberbatch, showing he can do situation comedy as well as he does everything else in the thesp game).

Chuck in Finnemore himself as Cole's keen but dim son-of-all work, plus an unusually high level of well-researched technical information about flying, and you have a half-hour that flies by (fnaarg fnaarg).