Sam Wollaston

Blandings (BBC1, Sunday), a jolly new series based on the Blandings Castle stories of PG Wodehouse, features with a starry cast. Pick of the performances is Jack Fathing's, as Freddie, Lord Emsworth's - Clarence's - ass of a son. A charming ass, mind. I don't quite believe Timothy Spall as Clarence, but this is probably more to do with association than performance. Bumbling, befuddled, sure. But I'm not convinced Spall should be a toff, should he? He does look right, actually. He also looks a bit like Empress, the pig. Well, they say owners look like their dogs, don't they, so why not pigs as well?

Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey! is the title of this one. It's the master call - like a master key - to unlock a pig's, any pig's, appetite if it goes on hunger strike. Which Empress does. Not helpful when she's up for Fat Pig of the Year. It's silly - of course it is, it's Wodehouse. It's also rather charming. What?

Mr Stink (BBC1, Sunday), adapted from David Walliams's kids' book, proved that winning a TV talent contest doesn't always mean immediately disappearing into obscurity. It stars Britain's Got Talent winner Pudsey - a half-decent performance, though he has a tendency to overact. The standout stars are Sheridan Smith as a slightly Nadine Dorriesy mum and the remarkably natural Nell Tiger Free (child actors have to have names like that) as young Chloe. Is that really Hugh Bonneville - Lord Grantham - in there, behind the beard and the stink?

Anyway, it's lovely - funny, warm, with a bit of a message (it's nice to be nice to people) but also some wickedness. And while so many kids and family shows are nostalgic, this feels contemporary; the nasty kids on the bus talk like real nasty kids on the bus.

TV review: QI Jingle Bells Christmas edition

Elephants eat Christmas trees? Beethoven had a Jingling Johnny? Sam Wollaston finds himself - yes - quite interested by the festive special of QI.

Thirty years on from the first Comic Strip Presents episode - the Famous Five parody in which Adrian Edmondson, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Peter Richardson and Timmy the dog went mad in Dorset - here's The Comic Strip Presents... Five Go to Rehab (G.O.L.D.). Dick (Edmondson) is nostalgic for those happy days cycling in the West country, camping, lashings of you-know-which fizzy drink etc, so he gets the old gang back together to pedal down memory lane. The others' hearts aren't really in it though; they've moved on, they're alcoholics, they've got other secrets, they don't want to be there.

Which rather reflects the whole experience I'm afraid. Comedy has moved on; what was once anarchic now isn't. This kind of pastiche feels tired (was it ever that funny?), certainly laboured over an hour. Someone left the top off the ginger beer, for 30 years. No fizz left; it's warm and flat.

Harry & Paul (BBC2, Sunday) seem to have moved to my north-west London manor. Oi, that's the bus stop up the road. "What a wonderful place Willesden is," says Victoria Wood who joins in to play, alongside Harry, a pair of minor royals, visiting a corner shop in a less salubrious part of town than they're used to. It's one of the hits.

What, hit and miss? A sketch show? Really? Of course it is. You could even argue that this kind of traditional sketch show shouldn't have much of a future. But television would be poorer without Harry & Paul, because it can be so good.

It's not about the gags - if you looked at the script, you would probably just think: eh? It's all about the characters, and the interaction of the characters. Enfield and Whitehouse don't just dress up and put on silly voices, they possess their characters. The hits are big hits. "Probable quare" still makes me laugh. And the one at the end where it all goes Nordic noir is a joy.

Spectacular and embarrassing U-turn time. At the start of this series of The Thick of It (BBC2, Saturday) I said it had lost its way, and wondered if Armando Iannucci had, what with all his other projects such as conquering America, taken his eye off it. To be fair to me, that first episode was weak.

Since then it has been patchy, with highs and ... not exactly lows, but kind of so-so middle grounds. Nearly all the highs have come when the opposition (Tucker, Murray, Reeder etc) has been under the spotlight.

This one, an hour-long Hutton/Leveson-type inquiry into Mr Tickel's death and practices in politics, all set in one room, is something different. Not just sparkling, but also tense and claustrophobic. I even felt a bit moved, seeing Malcolm Tucker on the ropes for the first time, a fallen despot. And it's so very real - it basically is Leveson, just with characters from TTOI in it. Satire at its very very best, a brilliant piece of television.

In new sitcom Hebburn (BBC2), young Jack returns to the family home after some time working away. He's brought new wife Sarah with him. They got married on the spur of the moment ... Hang on, this all sounds familiar. Yes, it's not dissimilar to that other new BBC sitcom Cuckoo. So Cuckoo has a girl bringing an American hippy back, and Jack's a boy, bringing a Jewish girl from York home to Hebburn on Tyneside (haway the lads).

But in both much of the humour centres on the families not seeing eye-to-eye on everything with the new arrivals. And again, it's fairly traditional family sitcom fare - neither brave nor original. Vic Reeves's presence (he's the dad) doesn't bring a touch of the surreal you might hope for from him. But it's not real either; these people don't behave or speak like real people, they behave and speak like a sitcom family.

Oh it's OK, I suppose. There are some decent performances. I like the way they make bagels, with a bread roll and an apple corer. I'm pretty sure that's the only time I actually laughed though. Hebburn Meh-burn.

I've tried to like Cuckoo (BBC3), I really have. I like the premise - girl goes gap-year travelling, comes back with floppy-upper-lipped American new-age husband. He's not quite what girl's family had in mind for her.

People I know and whose judgment I trust (did trust) have told me they think it's funny. But the girl (Tamla Kari) is so dippy that it's hard to feel anything for her except annoyance. The comedy is mainly based around the generational/ideological gap and tension between husband (Andy Samberg) and dad (Greg Davies); but it's overdone, forced, not recognisable or real. Nor is it surreal, or bold. It's just a little bit silly really.

"Last night I dreamed I went to Hunderby (Sky Atlantic) again ..." Yes, I think that has a certain ring to it. OK, so no one actually says that in this filthy little comedy, written by and starring Julia Davis, but it's clear she's more than just nodding at Rebecca. It pretty much is Rebecca, with added Julia Davis-macabre (Daphne Doom Horror here? Sorry). And extra Nighty-Night inappropriateness, because she's Julia Davis. Oh, and she has taken it back to the 1830s, presumably because she likes the feel and smell of them days, the clothes. And the olde-worlde speak.

That kind of language does sit very nicely with Davis's potty pen. No, nicely is not right, more like wrongly. But gloriously wrongly. "You are much darker down there than perhaps I'd imagined," says Edmund the vicar, staring at his new bride who's naked in the bath.

"Do I not please you, sir?" asks poor Helene.

"Nay, nay, 'tis just that Arabelle was smooth as ham, nature did not busy her broken mound with such a black and forceful brush."

Arabelle is the previous wife, the Rebecca character who hangs like a stone around poor Helene's neck, perfect in every way (including perfectly smooth as ham "down there").

Poor Helene is taken off to be shaved by Dorothy, the Mrs Danvers housekeeper character (Davis, beautifully deadpan and creepy), before the marriage can be consummated.

"Come bride, 'tis a quarter after 10, we shall intercourse until a 30 after," says Edmund cheerfully (another great comedy performance, by Alex MacQueen). I'm not quite sure why, but that little indefinite article before "30" adds an extra spoonful of cringiness. Davis is good like that, with language; she can milk an extra wince out of a line, just by adding a tiny little word.

It's not just about the words though. The sex, when it (sort of) happens, is horrendous, as horrid as the two scenes of comedy dancing are hilarious. Like squeaky rabbit rape, though perhaps technically not rape because, as Helene says, "'tis not in".

Yes, sometimes it feels as if Davis is showing off, simply demonstrating that she dares to go to places no one else does (especially places "down there"). Why shouldn't she, though? It doesn't all work, doesn't all come off; at times you're spluttering and shuddering at the wrongness. Laughing a lot too, though, because it is, as I said, gloriously wrongness.

Oh and unlike the weekend's Bad Sugar (which Davis starred in) and A Touch of Cloth, it's not just a series of jokes. There's mortar sticking the gags together, a reason to come back for more. I mean a story. Not Davis's story, perhaps, but a very good one.

Compaired to Hunderby, Citizen Khan (BBC1) looks very un-bold indeed. It's a family based sitcom that feels like it's from about 1983. You know, Mr Khan parks in a disabled space, someone sees him getting out of the car, so he adopts a limp, cue laughter. The fact that the parking space is at the mosque doesn't make it any more interesting I'm afraid - perhaps even highlights what a pity it is that the BBC's first Asian sitcom is so safe.

Oh, it's not that bad, I suppose. Adil Ray's performance is spirited. There are some nice touches, like the plastic sofa covers. But even the best joke - Mr Khan's imaginative speechifying (JFK, MLK, TJ*) being broadcast from the speaker at the top of the minaret - you can see coming a mile off, as soon as he picks up the mic. It seems for interesting original comedy you now have to look to the right of the first three columns in the listings page.

*Tom Jones.