Sam Wollaston

A Touch of Cloth (Sky1), was/is (there's more on Monday) too long. Charlie Brooker's crime drama spoof, in which John Hannah and Suranne Jones gamely play characters not too dissimilar from ones they play in actual cop shows, is stuffed to the rafters with jokes. Very good jokes, less good jokes, clever jokes, stupid jokes, visual jokes, knowing jokes, new jokes, old jokes, surreal jokes, puns, nods, winks. There is no let-up, it's relentless - like there's a joke machine aimed at your head, and Charlie's not letting go of the trigger. After a while I was exhausted, and began to forget what the battle was all about. The are moments of razor-sharp brilliance, but it doesn't have the dark beauty, the resonance or the relevance of Black Mirror.

TV review: The Revolution Will Be Televised

These two pranksters even tried to get Tony Blair sainted. What cojones!

It's a shame that Jack Whitehall has thrown everything at his own character in Bad Education (BBC3), and more or less forgotten about everyone else. Michelle Gomez, star of Green Wing and such a hilarious physical comic actor, is unforgivably underused. I'd also like to see more of some of the kids who are brilliant - Chantelle the slag, camp Stephen, Grayson the bully (love the way he says "shut up"). That would give it more layers, more depth. It's all Jack's Alfie though. I guess that's what happens when the writer is also the star. Me me me me me.

BUT - and it's a big, upper-case but - Bad Education is still fabulous, a very silly half-hour of anarchic inappropriate joy. With some lovely situations, and some lovely lines. "Make a noise, like a girl having a crap," teacher Alfie orders pupil Joe, cowering in the girls' toilets, when the deputy goes into the next cubicle to empty a confiscated bottle of cider.

Crucially, and probably because it's the creation of one guy, Bad Education has heaps of personality. It may be a flawed baby, but it's Whitehall's baby.

Confession time. I didn't review Dead Boss (BBC3) when it began last week. Here's why. I'm a big fan of Sharon Horgan, who co-wrote and stars in it. Pulling, which she also co-wrote and starred in, was fabulous, one of my comedy highlights of recent times. But this was pretty lame - and tame - in comparison. I wanted to like it, but couldn't.

So I ignored it. Perhaps it needed time to bed in (pah!), and would get into its stride in week two. I told myself I was giving it a chance by deferring judgment, when of course I was really simply bottling it.

This episode is maybe a bit better. There are some nice lines: "Mia casa, tua casa, is that German, erm, mein Kampf is your Kampf?" Horgan's character Helen tells her new prison exchange cellmate Gertie (played by Anna Crilly, whose German accent is pretty much the same as the indeterminate eastern European one she has as Magda in Lead Balloon). And some nice performances (Emma Pierson's stands out, as the dead boss's widow). But, let's be honest, it's not good - neither wonderfully anarchic nor wonderfully rude, as Pulling was. It lacks that conviction and confidence. It's old-fashioned, unadventurous and, more serious still, unfunny.

Oh God, my confession gets worse, it was a bigger bottle even than that. Sharon Horgan follows me on Twitter. I was like an excited little boy when she did, given that I don't just follow her, I practically stalk her. Now I'm like someone who's pestered her forever for a kiss, she's finally relented (out of pity), and I'm running around saying her breath stinks. Let's face it though; it does. Not literally, but her sitcom does.

I say she follows me, I'm sure she doesn't any more. Oh well. Nothing - and no one - comes between me and critical integrity ... Yeah, shush now.

TV review: Nina Conti - A Ventriloquist's Story

Welcome to the weird - but rather wonderful - world of talking with your hand up a puppet.

TV review: Cardinal Burns

Those man-eating zombies might be puerile but they're dead funny.

So I suppose we'd better get Derek (Channel 4), Ricky Gervais's little (comedy?) drama set in an old peeps' home, out of the way first. To begin with, I can't see what all the fuss is about. OK, so the title character isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but is that really mocking disabled and mentally ill people? Can you ban simpletons, even ones who are bathed in a warm light? Baldrick, Bean, Bottom, all cancelled, by PC plod?

I think the columnists and critics who have been sharpening their pencils to stick into Ricky's eyes are doing so because of previous lapses in judgment. I mean Mong-gate of course. But Derek isn't controversial.

Trouble is, nor is it very good. The whole mockumentary thing feels tired now (and what are these films being made, do you ever wonder that?). There's a lack of confidence about it too. The humour (if you can call it that) yo-yos between standard been-there Gervais Office squirmy awkwardness and sit-in-a-custard-pie/fall-in-the-pond slapstick.

Most of all, though, I'm not feeling the character - I'm neither moved nor amused by him. In The Office and Extras, Gervais was basically playing himself. He was someone you could loathe and love at the same time; you could begin to understand how it would feel to be him. Derek, a much more sympathetic character, is someone else, and so requires more acting. Which, perhaps, given this awkward show of haminess, isn't his forte. Neither is it Karl Pilkington's, as Derek's sort-of mate - not much hope of best supporting Bafta, I'd say, though he's probably straying less far from his real self.

Its a shame. I really wanted it to be good. To shut up the Gervais bashers, for one, who may even be more annoying than Gervais himself. But also - and mainly - because he used to be so good. Remember?

The first series of Twenty Twelve (BBC2[]/z]), which went out on BBC4 last year, was underwhelming; "nibbling satire", I think I said - rather brilliantly, if I may say so - rather than biting satire. The fact that real Olympic overlord Seb Coe was happy to take part is not a good sign (and he appears here again). I doubt he'd agree to be in The Thick of It. Its transfer to BBC2 hasn't changed things much: it hasn't become more off-message or less gentle. But ]Jessica Hynes, who plays the hopeless head of brands, is still fabulous. And the final scene, a disastrous video conference with the Algerian representative, is wonderful. Literally LOL.

Roger & Val Have Just Got In (BBC2) is back for another series. I'm surprised, I have to say. I simply don't get it, though I know it has its admirers. It's a beautifully observed portrait of everyday life and a relationship, they say, poignant and touching. I could switch off the telly and look in the living room mirror for that, I say; I want a bit more from a drama; it's boring. It's well acted by Dawn French and Alfred Molina, they say. OK, they can have that. It's Mike Leigh, they say. It's not, it's Mike Leigh-Lite, Mike Leigh Zero. This has neither the grit nor the humour of Mike Leigh.

Perhaps I'm being old-fashioned, but the dearth of jokes is a slight problem for me - if this is a comedy, as I'm led to believe. It's a sitcom, without the com. It's a sit. Or a sit-through, because rarely has half an hour felt so long.

I didn't do a lot of laughing during Peter Capaldi's Cricklewood Greats (BBC4, Sunday). This may be because this kind of spoof documentary is rarely funny. Or because what is being sent up here - a particularly kind of reverential documentary - isn't enough of a phenomenon for most people to merit the ridicule. Or because acting (at which Capaldi is obviously brilliant) and writing are very different skills. Or a combination of all of the above. But I'm afraid it left me cold.