Sam Wollaston

Am I the only person in the world who doesn't love Little Britain? The observations are quite nice, but I don't think Lucas and Walliams are great writers or great performers - a shame, given that they are our most successful comedy writing and performing double act. Each sketch is one idea dragged out tediously to the point of embarrassment. I can honestly say I didn't laugh once in this one, didn't even smile. I don't even find it offensive. Just boring and irritating. Moving it all to America doesn't change anything.

Massive is another silly new sitcom with Johnny Vegas. He's moved from Benidorm to Manchester, but the level of comedy hasn't changed much - all gentle roguishness, mice, too much Strongbow, falling over and exaggerated facial expressions. There's an element of X Factor about it: we're setting up a new record label, and there's a battle-of-the-bands contest to get the operation up and running. But there's much more drama in the real X Factor, and more humour. The best thing in this is a pea-soup coloured Austin Allegro. Nice wheels.

Messrs Enfield and Whitehouse are back with their sketch show. There's not much new here; the jokes are mostly about people saying things you wouldn't expect them to (builders discussing the merits of Brit Art, etc) and funny foreigners, speaking funny. And yet I laughed. Not all the time - this is a sketch show, so it is hit-and-miss by definition. But when I did laugh, I laughed quite a lot. Maybe the old ones are the best.

The Cup tries hard to be The Office of the football field, using the same makey-uppy documentary device. Nothing wrong with that - it's a good way of getting to know characters quickly without forcing plot lines, although here it doesn't feel as fresh as when Ricky Gervais was doing it. And there are some decent performances, although Steve Edge as main man Terry stands out a bit too far perhaps. His character, a super-competitive footballing dad, is not just in your face, he's rammed right down your throat. Subtle this isn't, and that's the problem.

Kevin Bishop does impressions - of Jonathan Ross, Gordon Ramsey, Al Pacino, lots of people. Generally there's a twist. So Al Pacino is auditioning for Superman, on a DVD that comes free with the Daily Mail. And here's Cowell - not Simon though, his (much) less successful brother Brian. They're still impressions, though. And I'm not really seeing anything I haven't seen on Bremner, McGowan, French and Saunders even. Do we need another? Guess how Americans are portrayed. Fat and stupid. That's just lame.

MeeBOX, a comedy sketch show created by Adam Buxton, half of Adam and Joe (the first half), is a bit of a muddle.

It has a lot to do with internet video clips (I think the name MeeBOX is a nod to YouTube). There are all sorts of knowing nods to the modern world, sometimes so knowing I don't really know what they're nodding at, if you know what I'm saying.

Hit and miss, I think you'd call it - obviously, the phrase was invented to describe comedy sketch shows. BBC3 certainly doesn't seem convinced, putting it out at 11.45pm on a Sunday night.

But I do like the spoof of a TV show called 10,000 Things That Are Sooo Crap, in which 'journalists', 'comedians', a token posh bloke and a token Scot sit on sofas, or on the stairs, and talk bollocks about bollocks. They swim, that's about it, says journalist Manthea Shringleton, about fish, at number 1,245 in the list of crap things.

Commercial Breakdown With Jimmy Carr is the same as Commercial Breakdown With Rory McGrath, Commercial Breakdown With Jo Brand, Commerical Breakdown With Ruby Wax, and whoever else has done it: laughing at funny advertisements from abroad - and some from here. It may have been amusing back in the 1880s when Jasper Carrrot started it, but it's wearing a bit thin now. You can have a much more amusing 40 minutes on YouTube.

Carr tries to bring it into the modern age with some risque gags about mentally ill people, and adventurous bedroom practices, but there's no disguising the fact it's still laughing at funny foreign ads. And actually, Jimmy, call me Mary Whitehouse if you like, but I'm not sure that national television, in the form of BBC1 on a Sunday night, is the correct forum to ask your girlfriend to have anal sex with you.

Benidorm was lame, hackneyed and cliched first time round, and it doesn't seem to have gone anywhere new. It says something about the quality of the writing when the funniest thing about a show is Johnny Vegas failing to dive into the pool, again and again. I think he's trying to tell you something about the show: it's a big, wet belly flop.

His missus has left him for a man from Belgium (Belgium! Ha ha ha!) and now Adrian Edmondson has moved in with his own kids. He's bumbling through his new singledom - bumbling into things and falling over, both metaphorically and literally. We have a good giggle at the way the Chinese lodger speaks - there are misunderstandings, boom boom.

Maybe it's ironic commissioning, like the Andy Millman sitcom in Extras. If so, it's a bit too clever. And if not, then it's just not good enough, I'm afraid. Predictable groan-along sitcoms are no longer acceptable television. There is interesting new comedy out there - look at Pulling - but not on ITV, on a Friday night. Hell, I may have to go out next week.

Pulling is not just about shocking us with the filthy behaviour of a bunch of thoroughly disreputable thirtysomething women (though it is quite a lot about that, and it does it very well). It's good in many other ways, too. It's beautifully observed and written, the characters speak not in a comedy-drama way, but in the way real people speak (which, you could argue, is what a comedy-drama way should be), even on the phone. They're fabulous, these characters - larger than life, but also just like life, or lifelike. We all know - or have met - Karens, Louises, Donnas (you know who you are!). They're bad and mad, but also warm and lovely - a killer combination. They care about each other, so we care about them.

Pulling shares a lot of ground with Nighty Night - it has the cojones to go where other comedy doesn't dare, a darkness and a genuine belly-laugh funniness. It's the funniest thing on telly at the moment by a mile.