Steve Williams (II)

The Rack Pack: Did it score a maximum break?

Unveiled on the evening of the Masters Final (and the iPlayer team offer their huge gratitude to Ronnie O'Sullivan for winning so quickly everyone could watch both), the film has generated a huge response on social media.

I was really looking forward to this series because I think we need more family-friendly laugh-tracked silly comedy on our screens. Sadly it's not quite there yet, with some inspired gags and genuinely funny jokes mixed with some rather iffy character development and scenes which cross the line from 'silly' to 'stupid'. If it reminds me of anything it's Hippies - another much-hyped series from some big names which was enjoyable and amusing, but also chaotic and sometimes self-indulgent.

Sadly too it looks like Lab Rats is following in the footsteps of Hippies by performing quite poorly in the ratings and enduring some stinking reviews. It's perhaps to be expected - watching Robin Ince in a silly wig running around shouting for an entire episode is something that's always going to be an acquired taste. But I'm sticking with it, and it'd be a shame if it didn't get a second series after this week's episode, if not the funniest half hour of television this year, was almost certainly the cleverest.

"TIDY!"

We're more than halfway through the latest series of Gavin and Stacey and so far, hardly anything has actually, you know, happened. But that's all to the good, because I reckon this is the funniest, most warm-hearted sitcom on telly for ages.

What's great is that all the characters in the series are likable, with even the more overt comic characters like Uncle Bryn and Nessa being fully rounded and sympathetic, without simply being used to set up jokes. The performances are exceptional too - James Corden is a great comedy actor and lights up the screen whenever he appears, and although some people seem to be finding Joanna Page a bit annoying, I think she's playing it just right, and her accent just makes the lines funnier.

Heat magazine (yeah, yeah) reports this week that the centrepiece for next year's Comic Relief will be, oh God, Fame Academy again. It's quite remarkable given that, by the time it comes around, it'll have been four years since the last proper series of the show, but seemingly such is the dearth of ideas for Comic Relief, it's being allowed to live on purely in its celebrity version forever. Indeed I'm not sure how the BBC are happy with this flop continuing - what next, Celebrity Eldorado?

Are there four words in the English language more depressing than Jon Culshaw's Commercial Breakdown? Amazingly Culshaw is now the seventh person to front this format on BBC1 - after Jasper Carrott, Patrick Kielty, Rory McGrath, Jo Brand, Ruby Wax and Jim Davidson - which is remarkable when it was already running out of steam while the first presenter was doing it.

The Sitcom Story surely disappoints both the comedy fan, who wants something other than just the same old clips again, and the casual viewer who just wants the clips without the dull chat. Yet that's obviously the problem with trying to squeeze some 50 years of television into three hour-long shows.

I laughed out loud at World of Pub, many times, like I haven't laughed at a sitcom for absolutely ages. The programme is an absolute breath of fresh air, moving away from the "dark", "moody" atmosphere of other comedy programmes and just being a genuinely funny half hour.

From the awkward attempts to get a sense of time (so the Teletubbies are mentioned, as if this would send us straight back to 1997) to the clumsy attempts to tell us what's going on (when Adrian "narrates" the camera goes blurred around him, just so we get the point that the line's not been said out loud), the programme is a confused and irritating attempt to recapture past glories.

It's impossible to believe that this programme reached a third minute on television, let alone a third series. It's clearly the worst comedy programme transmitted this year, and could possibly be the worst programme full stop.

There are two more episodes of this series to come, and the big question has to be, exactly what are they going to talk about in those? Haven't we seen enough of Alan's crew setting up his stage gear and Ian laughing at nothing in particular? We know that comedy's a hard job, Alan, so can you not keep illustrating it?