Ruth Jones (I)

Following on from the success of her Christmas Cracker and Easter Treat, the ebullient actress Ruth Jones (Gavin & Stacey) returns for another one-off chat show. It promises to be a jovial affair, with Jonathan Ross, Geordie comic Sarah Millican and the actor Stephen Mangan all joining her on the sofa, as well as music from an irrepressible Irish rockabilly star called Imelda May.

Ruth Jones's Summer Holiday

Haste ye Back!" - you'll see that written a lot at Edinburgh airport.

Corden and Jones reunited for Sky1 comedy Stella

Gavin & Stacey stars James Corden and Ruth Jones are being reunited in a new comedy set in Wales.

James Corden hints at a Gavin & Stacey return

James Corden hints at a possible Gavin and Stacey special saying that he would be disappointed if he didn't write again with the show's co-creator Ruth Jones.

The Beeb's drama department has carved out a neat niche with its biopics of beloved British comedy stars: from Kenneth Williams and Tony Hancock to Frankie Howerd and Morecambe and Wise. This latest film, first shown on BBC Four in January, is a worthy addition. Gavin & Stacey's Ruth Jones stars in an acclaimed dramatisation of Carry On star Hattie Jacques's life. Though she played an austere matron on screen, Jacques's private life was actually rather racy. The story focuses on the early 1960s love triangle between Jacques, her chauffeur (Aidan Turner) and her husband, Dad's Army star John Le Mesurier (a heartbreaking turn from Cold Feet's Robert Bathurst) - whom she continued to love, even when she moved her toyboy into their bed. It's a bittersweet story, superbly acted, and followed by a repeat of Jacques's 1963 appearance on This Is Your Life.

If you missed this superior biographical drama when it was shown earlier this year, here's a good chance to catch up. Ruth Jones is mesmerising as Hattie Jacques, a beloved comic actor who became part of a domestic ménage with adored husband John Le Mesurier and sexy younger man John Schofield. The story is irresistible: Schofield (Being Human's Aidan Turner) meets Hattie after a charity event and the two are quickly in the grip of an electrifying sexual passion. Bizarrely, even incredibly, Schofield moves into the Le Mesurier home and the marital bed, with John banished to the attic. Yet Stephen Russell's script judges no one as it reveals a marriage that, in its own strange way, was rock-solid, with Hattie and John sharing a lifelong devotion, even after their divorce. Ever the gentleman, John takes the blame for the break-up. Hattie is a touching drama that, for once, doesn't perform a hatchet job on an adored British comedy figure.

Comedy, music and good causes - it can only be the show that makes you laugh until you give.

Harry Hill, Steve Coogan, Jennifer Saunders, Joanna Lumley, Ant and Dec and Armstrong and Miller are all doing something funny for money this year, along with the casts of The Inbetweeners, Outnumbered and Miranda.

We can also look forward to a specially shot mini-episode of Doctor Who, and James Corden will be back with the third instalment of his iconic Smithy trilogy - calling in favours from some very big names in showbiz.

Corden will also be one fifth of Fake That - a tribute band which boasts the talents of David Walliams, Alan Carr, Catherine Tate and John Bishop.

Never fear, though, the real Take That will be performing too. In fact, the night's going to be awash with boy-bands, as JLS are in the studio and it's The Wanted's turn to do the official Comic Relief single, Gold Forever.

The music line-up also includes chart-busting Adele, Annie Lennox, Elbow and Gareth Malone, who will be trying to turn some TV chefs into a Comic Relief choir.

Your hosts through this comedy marathon will be Davina McCall, Jonathan Ross, Michael McIntyre, Graham Norton, Claudia Winkleman and Fearne Cotton.

There have been 12 Red Nose Days since 1988, helping to raise more than £500million to help needy people in the UK and abroad.

There'll also be films from David Tennant, Jack Dee, Ruth Jones and Comic Relief stalwart Lenny Henry, each providing frequent reminders of how your money can help change people's lives for the better.

Hattie review

It was the central performances that were special. Ruth Jones is more beautiful than Hattie Jacques was, but otherwise she was just right.

In Hattie, Hattie Jacques (Ruth Jones) looked like she might be about to tell This Is Your Life host Eamonn Andrews to get stuffed, before composing herself and affecting modesty: "Oh Eamonn, they don't come much duller than me." Ha ha. What Andrews didn't know was that Jacques had just changed the man in the marital bed, despatching husband John Le Mesurier upstairs and summoning down their lodger.

No one knew this, This Is Your Life passed off without scandal, and in the divorce court, to protect Jacques, Le Mesurier pretended to have been the adulterer. "Thank you for ending our lovely marriage so beautifully," she said.

What a story! How civilised and quietly heroic and terribly British. Well, Le Mesurier was, anyway. The drama gave us nothing of Le Mesurier the actor and not very much of Jacques the actress.

Eric Sykes, in the run-up to BBC4's latest squint under the greasepaint of the great showbiz era, had complained about this.

But Hattie wasn't a sensationalist piece, just sad and moving and told in the usual Beeb 4 way with one classic car (the E-Type Jag driven by the fancy man, not his own), period lampshades, a fug of cigarette smoke, skinny ties, a dollop of casual sexism, a couple of old choons and, of course, a good script and some cracking acting.

Jones did that remarkable thing of making you forget all about her best-known role (Gavin and Somebody) but Robert Bathurst as Le Mesurier was even better, perfectly capturing his vagueness.

Swift production of the martini decanter solved most of his crises, although for having to tell his sons he was finally leaving he tried this sweetener: "I've got you both... pen knives."

I cheered when he remarried Jacques' friend Joan, completely forgetting that the latter's subsequent affair with Tony Hancock had been the subject of a previous Beeb 4 biopic. Pass the martini, old bean.

Hattie DVD review

Ruth Jones' version of Jacques still comes out of this being as difficult to dislike as the real Hattie was.