Sam Wollaston

The ventriloquist's 2012 film Her Master's Voice - about going to a convention in America with her monkey and another puppet of her recently dead mentor and lover Ken Campbell - was one of the most imaginative and hilarious things that's been on TV recently, and you should see it if you haven't already.

This time she is learning to entertain children in hospital. Without her monkey, for reasons of health and safety. So she'll be a clown. But clowns have their issues as well; everyone hates them - children, parents, charity donors - clowns even hate themselves, that's part of their innate tragedy.

So Nina's up against a lot - not just acquiring new talents, but overcoming clown-prejudice, and - most of all - learning to find the strength to be with very sick kids. It's still mostly about Nina of course (mostly via Monkey, who is reprieved, via a hot wash) but it's also about the kids, which is why it can't be as funny as HMV. There's not much laughter around where it's most needed, in the wards of seriously and terminally ill children. It's almost unbearably sad then. But touchingly human too, brave and important.

Stella review - cosy, feelgood, old-fashioned comedy

Ruth Jones's new series offers optimism and the warm blanket of community to soothe life's mishaps - perfect for watching with mother-in-law.

Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney interview

Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney on sex, parenthood and Catastrophe.

Last Tango in Halifax review

Sally Wainwright's drama about family and relationships is so good it makes you think about your own.

Best TV of 2014: No 5 - The Trip to Italy

Was the Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon vehicle a travelogue, a comedy, a food show, scripted reality, or something else entirely? Or was it simply as good as television gets?

It is to the police what Twenty Twelve and W1A were to the Olympics and the BBC, though bolder, sharper, swearier. Maybe more like The Thick of It then, with which it shares some creative DNA. And, like TTOI, there are, in with the deadpan insanity, some truths. About the police, their image issues, target culture, political interference, privatisation etc. As well as - as you'd expect with Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong writing - some glorious lines.

"I'm on 24-hour-a-day storm watch yeah, I sleep like a cokey meerkat on an electric fence, that's me relaxing, I've got a map inside my head of all the trouble in the world and you just popped up on the radar like Godzilla's hard on, and I will cut you loose if you ever, ever fuck me again Charlie, all right?" says Commissioner Richard Miller. Played by James Nesbitt, who looks like he's enjoying himself after - during - all the misery of The Missing.

Citizen Khan review - very traditional British sitcom

Watch out for the Khans in the arrivals hall - they're the family who seems to have flown in from a 1970s sitcom.

It's never a good idea to have a pun in a name. Book titles, bands, babies, yachts, TV shows, anything. Come up with it, say it out loud, have a laugh, have a groan, move on, that's the correct behaviour. What's funny now won't be next week. Even a good pun - which, admittedly, Scrotal Recall (Channel 4) is - will irritate in time, if you have to live with it. Imagine if it gets recommissioned.

It's not just a good pun, but an apt one too. Dylan (played by likable actor/folk singer/posh boy Johnny Flynn) finds out he has chlamydia and must contact all the people he's ever slept with, to tell them the news. So memory and (presumably) nutsacks do come in to it. But there's a sweaty, visceral, hairy, loose-skinned crudity about the title that doesn't quite fit Tom Edge's new comedy, tonally.

Dylan's doing it - recalling his sex life - alphabetically, starting with A, for Abigail, three years ago at a wedding. Which one is she, though? The new girlfriend, who dumps him, during the marriage service? One of the bridesmaids? The hot vicar (complete with dog collar, woof woof)? "Definitely top of the wedding sex pyramid," says Dylan's louche mate Luke (Daniel Ings). So there's a guessing game, a nice element of whodun'im about it. [Spoiler alert: don't read the rest of this paragraph if you haven't yet seen it and plan to.] The answer turns out to be none of the above, but the girl behind the desk of the hotel. It's obvious, in retrospect. "Ding if you need me," she said. He did, so he did.

There's more to Scrotal Recall than ding-dong and scrotums and "wall-to-wall snatch" (louche Luke's description of the wedding), though. It's about Dylan's examination of himself, and his relationship with women, including best friend/true love Evie (Antonia Thomas from Misfits). It's about how love hurts, and not just when he pees. There's something of Four Weddings about it, and One Day (you know, by David Nicholls, whose new novel Us is already being read by the person opposite you on the train). Charming, then. But also with drunkenness, and falling over, and bodily fluids. And it's very funny. I already hope it gets recommissioned. I can live with the title.

Charming show Detectorists (BBC Four), is a new comedy written by, directed by, and starring Mackenzie Crook. Apart from local eccentric Larry Bishop's land, which has never been gone over with a metal detector before, it's not especially new ground. A pair of oddball middle-aged men, metal detectorists working a ploughed field, find shotgun caps, blakeys, a ringpull ('83, Tizer) and - beep beep beep beep beep - ancient history student Sophie! Circa 1990, I'd guess, certainly much younger than Lance and Andy, whose collected dreams suddenly aren't just about Saxon treasures.

We're talking nerds, and nerdy male friendship, midlife crises, all that. But it's sharp, nicely observed, good to look at, with lovely understated performances from Crook and Toby Jones.

Would I Lie to You? review

Did Kirsty Wark steal Jeremy Paxman's Snoopy mug? This game show is funny enough that the truth doesn't matter.