Ronni Ancona

There hasn't been a good series about "second time around lovers" since Nineties sitcom As Time Goes By. This charming comedy-drama ends that drought in style. Celia Dawson (Anne Reid) and Alan Buttershaw (Derek Jacobi) are both widowed and haven't seen each other for 60 years. When the old flames are reunited via Facebook, their feelings are reignited - and they discover that it was a twist of fate that separated them in the first place.

This is superior fare, based on writer Sally Wainwright's (Scott & Bailey) own mother's internet romance. It's also directed by Doctor Who alumnus Euros Lyn and made by estimable production company Red. However, it's the performances that truly elevate it - not just from classy leads Reid and Jacobi who are amusingly irascible and sweetly bumbling, respectively, but a strong supporting cast which includes Sarah Lancashire, Nicola Walker, Tony Gardner and Ronni Ancona. All come into their own over the six episodes, as the lovers' families are thrown together amid sub-plots involving bisexuality, alchoholism and a murder mystery. Watch out for a neat surprise in the final scene of this opener.

With Rory Bremner no longer a regular presence on our screens, and the likes of Jon Culshaw, Alistair McGowan and Ronni Ancona failing to deliver much bite, there was a definite gap in the market for a risk-taking, quick-witted impressions show - until about three weeks ago, when this excellent series abruptly filled it. It showcases a handful of enjoyably sharp sketches lampooning the likes of Bear Grylls, Simon Cowell, the Gallagher brothers, Fearne Cotton and Amy Childs. Particular highlights are Brian Cox admitting that he buys his vintage leather jackets from Urban Outfitters, and Adele singing her drinks order to a barman in a pub.

This sparklingly funny documentary, part of a series on different aspects of British light entertainment which originally went out in 2006, explores the role that impressionists have played in British entertainment over the last 50 years. Its subjects range from Mike Yarwood's pitch-perfect lambasting of Harold Wilson in the Sixties up to the present-day work of Ronni Ancona and Alistair McGowan.

Was the BBC's 2010 Ronnie Corbett-centric Christmas special The One Ronnie really so successful that they feel able to riff on the title for this similarly outdated Lenny Henry showcase? The first minute-and-a-half - as Lenny busts into a serious Swedish crime drama - promises good things, but it's downhill all the way from there: there really isn't a single joke here that works. It's partly redeemed by the fact that Lenny remains an effortlessly likeable performer, even in the most cringeworthy sketches - and there's some spectacularly lazy writing here, particularly when it comes to tackling anything political - and by a guest cast including Ronni Ancona and Peter Serafinowicz. A mostly harmless half hour, but don't expect a comeback.

Lenny Henry reminds us he was once a big name in comedy with this one-off show mixing brand new stand-up and sketches while revisiting some of the best remembered characters from The Lenny Henry Show. Supercool Delbert Wilkins, smooth-talking Donovan Bogarde and love god Theophilus P Wildebeeste rub shoulders with guests Ronni Ancona, Omid Djalili and Peter Serafinowicz in spoofs of The Killing, EastEnders and Twilight, among others.

At least Downton Abbey gives you laughs, which is more than you can say for The Comic Strip Presents - The Hunt for Tony Blair. Family loyalty would explain the commissioning of this "satire", since Comic Strip helped launch the channel, but I'm not sure anything can explain its transmission. The pastiche was undisciplined (what was Barbara Windsor doing in a 39 Steps parody, other than showing that Ronni Ancona can do the voice?), the script flabby and seemingly unedited ("Here, I was back in the city. Anonymous... apart from my sack-cloth toga") and the plot utterly devoid of satirical bite. It should have been cordoned off with crime-scene tape, not broadcast.

We see so little of The Comic Strip ensemble these days that it's easy to forget how long they've been in the trenches of British spoof, tossing out a grenade every now and then, as if cursed to spend the rest of their days striving to match the perfection of their hilarious first episode, "Five Go Mad in Dorset", which introduced high jinks to Channel 4's inaugural broadcast in 1982 and the term "lashings of ginger beer" to the cultural memory.

"The Hunt for Tony Blair" - a parodic splicing of noughties politics and 1950s British film noir (though what Herman's Hermits were doing on the soundtrack I don't know) - wasn't uproariously funny but it was handsomely made, with melodramatic shadows and enough money for fog, flat-footed policemen and steam trains. The plot, such as it was - a madcap chase across country, with the PM on the run for murder - threw up knockabout humour and vignettes from Blair's WMD fiasco, featuring a cast of the usual suspects: a languid Nigel Planer as Mandelson; Harry Enfield in East End shout mode as "Alastair"; the excellent Jennifer Saunders as Thatcher in her dotage (and full Barbara Cartland drag), watching footage of her Falklands triumphs from a chaise longue.

Director Peter Richardson, whose comic talents aren't seen enough on screen, played George Bush as a rasping B-movie Italian mobster ("I'm gonna get straight to the crotch of the matter here"). With the exception of impressionist Ronni Ancona (whose 10 seconds as Barbara Windsor seemed puzzlingly extraneous), no one went for a direct impersonation. Stephen Mangan didn't make a bad Blair, though he could have worked on the grin, and he couldn't quite make his mind up between feckless and reckless as he capered from one mishap to the next leaving a trail of bodies. Did Blair's moral insouciance ("Yet another unavoidable death, but, hey, shit happens") call for a look of idiocy or slipperiness?

The comedy had mischief at its heart in mooting that Blair had bumped off his predecessor, John Smith, and accidentally pushed Robin Cook off a Scottish mountain, while Robbie Coltrane's Inspector Hutton (aha!) tacitly invoked the spectre of Dr David Kelly (we never found out who Blair was charged with murdering). But it was hard to squeeze fresh satire from the overfamiliar stodge of the politics ("Tell Gordon to run the country and trust the bankers"). Mangan was at his funniest hiding among sheep in the back of a truck or kicking Ross Noble (playing an old socialist) off a speeding train, though there was amusement elsewhere. I had to laugh at variety theatre act Professor Predictor, shoehorned into the story to enable Rik Mayall in a bald wig and boffin glasses to answer questions from the audience. Would the Beatles still be at No 1 in 50 years' time?

"No. The Beatles will no longer exist. But Paul McCartney will marry a woman with one leg."

How the audience roared. "Pull the other one," someone shouted. Arf, arf.

The Liverpudlian returns for a second series of his show, mixing stand-up, sketches and interviews, covering a different subject affecting the British every week.

In this week's episode, Bishop covered the subjects of "Music and Fashion". Bishop is rather Peter Kay-esque in his methods. Quite a lot of his humour is nostalgic, looking back at things from when he was young, such as his routine about going into Woolworth's and buying a record.

This is also evident during his interview section which featured among other things people talking about records they have brought and their guilty pleasures. One pair of identical twins admitted buying a record by The Smurfs (speaking of which, now that The Smurfs have been made into a 3D film, what's Mark Kermode going to compare them unfavourably too?).

For me, the best parts of the show were the sketches. There were two sketches in this week's episode, one covering the time Bishop went to see U2 during their "Make Poverty History" page, and what was the perfect way to get back at them; and other being about Bishop's confusion about the phrase "kiss vigorously" when he was filming Skins alongside Ronni Ancona.

These bits were simply brilliant. The images depicted were hilarious, as were the gags. When you think that the sketch had ended, it didn't, getting even better as it went along.

A very enjoyable and funny programme. Like Peter Kay, but not so full of himself.

We're half way through Tony Pitts's blackly comic series, about a strange seaside place where odd people live. At three in the morning someone is screaming. It's the kind of thing that happens in Shedtown down by the bay, where dogs arrive as parcels in the post. It's a bit like Under Milk Wood with touches of Father Ted. And it's curiously addictive, the vivid, dreamlike script given life by a marvellous cast, including Suranne Jones, Ronni Ancona and Johnny Vegas as Colin (a thoughtful melancholic). Tonight: a puppet show about 9/11.

How Alistair McGowan reinvented himself as an actor

The Millennium dawned particularly brightly for Alistair McGowan. His seven-year love affair with Ronni Ancona had gone into meltdown, but they were just about to become the hottest names in TV comedy.