Terry Wogan

Radio Times review

The path from comedy to chat show is a well-trodden but perilous one. Alan Carr and Graham Norton have both skipped down that route with ease but now Michael McIntyre finds out whether his bouncy style of humour will work in the static format of a chat show.

Stand-up comedians don't always find it easy to allow someone else into the spotlight so he'll need to rein in his boisterousness a bit. If he wants pointers, two of his guests have been in the hot seat themselves before: Terry Wogan and Lily Allen (although the latter was widely panned for her efforts). It'll be interesting to see how Michael copes with his other guest, too - Lord Sugar doesn't suffer fools gladly, so he's not always the easiest interviewee.

The oft-mocked standup comedian tries his luck as a chatshow host, using his polite brand of charm to lure guests to the sofa in a new series. On a scale of Norton to Paxman, McIntyre's not likely to ruffle any feathers, and with Terry Wogan and Alan Sugar in the Beeb-heavy line-up that should suit his guests quite well. If the thought of Wogan dishing out chatshow tips makes you reach for the off button, wise mistress of controversy Lily Allen will also be on hand to liven matters up a bit.

Does the world really need another chat show? Decide for yourself as irrepressibly perky comedian Michael McIntyre tries to remind himself to shut up long enough to let his guests get a word in edgeways. Graham Norton, Alan Carr and Jonathan Ross will scarcely be quaking in their boots at McIntyre's opening guest list: Lily Allen, Lord Alan Sugar and Sir Terry Wogan can all be relied on for a jolly anecdote but it's a pretty safe choice for an opening gambit. McIntyre will need something a little edgier if he's going to stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Self-described camp Gok Wan lookalike Michael McIntyre heads off stage and onto a comfy-looking sofa as he becomes the latest celebrity to take a shot at fronting a chatshow. These things are completely awful when they don't work - the Beeb is probably still baring scars from Davina - and Michael isn't exactly being eased in gently, with mouthy pot stirrer Lily Allen and grumpy old man Lord Sugar among his first guests.

Still, Michael has been able to elicit chuckles from both comedy sophisticates and families just looking for something on TV to pass the time, so we're optimistic about this being watchable. Plus, he's got Sir Terry Wogan on as his third guest to help calm things down to a Radio 2 level of chill if need be. It's worth tuning in to for the sake of curiosity alone.

Reincarnation appears to be the watchword for 2014

In the case of true comedy greats, sometimes it might be better to leave us with our memories.

Britain lost one of its most cherished talents when Les Dawson died of a heart attack in 1993, aged just 62. He had been due to record An Audience with... two weeks later; now, thanks to the wonders of technology, a version of Dawson will at last "present" the show after 20 years.

ITV promises a television first: a "staggeringly realistic" 3D holographic projection of the comic. Friends Bruce Forsyth, Terry Wogan and Ken Dodd recall their memories and, courtesy of Dawson's widow Tracy, there's treasured family-video footage of Dawson with his daughter Charlotte, who was only eight months old when her father died.

We've always assumed that, since entering the kingdom of heaven, Les Dawson and Tupac Shakur have become firm friends. But now they have even more in common than they already did. Tupac famously performed, in hologram form, at the 2012 Coachella Festival.

We suspect that a hologrammatic representation of Les Dawson will never be asked to headline a major music festival. But that doesn't mean that the technology can't be applied to the nation's foremost purveyor of mother-in-law jokes. Les was booked to appear on An Audience With... back in 1993. Sadly, he passed away just weeks before recording.

But that hasn't stopped the wilder creative brains at ITV from coming up with this utterly barmy scheme which will see a Dawson hologram bantering with stars including Bruce Forsyth, Cilla Black and Terry Wogan. We are not making this up. To our intense disappointment, no previews were available. But this surely has every chance of being 2013's strangest hour of television.

TV commissioners take note. Impressions aren't funny. The actual act of sounding like someone else is an impressive skill, especially if you can do more than one, but by themselves, impressions are not in the remotest bit amusing. Jon Culshaw may do a canny Tom Baker, but the mere act of sounding like Tom Baker is about as humorous as getting stuck in a lift. With Jon Culshaw.

So it was refreshing to see Terry Mynott bringing something very different to the TV impressions table in his rather bleak new sitcom The Mimic.

Dour, slow and not the cheeriest of concepts, The Mimic doesn't scream hit. The tale of maintenance man Martin Hurdle, who muddles through life with only his uncanny ability as a mimic to perk himself up, isn't a gag-fest. It ekes out jokes and woos you in with pathos and the likeable Mynott.

It wasn't the most sure-footed debut, but purely for bravery and trying something different, I'm willing to come back next week. Mynott could knock out 27 minutes of Terry Wogan and Ronnie Corbett impressions, but he's tested new waters here and his exploration of the mundane, outsiders and the ordinary showed brief glimmers of potential.

And the fact that he didn't just wheel out a Tom Baker impression means that I'm willing to give those glimmers a chance.

New Channel 4 comedy The Mimic appears to have been built around the ability of its lead actor, Terry Mynott, to do impressions and there are moments when you wonder whether he provides a solid enough foundation. His Terry Wogan was very wobbly and his David Attenborough was a weird hybrid of Alan Bennett and Ian McKellen. Other impressions are so left-field they have to be visually signposted or cued up by a line of dialogue to make sure we get them.

But there was a promising little sequence as Martin (Mynott's character) sat slumped in front of his television and Morgan Freeman and James Earl Jones fought it out over who was best at adding gravitas to a natural-history programme. It's a comedy of underachievement essentially, complete with marimba noodling on the soundtrack to signal the underlying pathos, but it has some lovely downbeat moments and funny silences where some comedies might strive (unsuccessfully) for a big guffaw. Look out for Jo Hartley as Martin's friend Jean too. She's very good, so quietly you might miss it.

Impressionist Terry Mynott, last seen in Very Important People, stars as stuck-in-a-rut odd-jobs man Martin in this downbeat comedy drama. Whenever things look bleak, Martin's escape valve is to air his thoughts through other people's voices. From Terry Wogan to Morgan Freeman, anybody's voice is preferable to his own - until an old flame gives him pause for thought, claiming he's the father of her 18-year-old son. Can mimicry help him handle that one?