Tim McInnerny

Bleak Old Shop is surely too silly to be borne, yet it comes up with some great gags. Tonight, a bereaved Jedrington Secret-Past cannot demonstrate his grief because it's illegal for men to show emotion. So he is given a seedy solution that is both stupid and very funny.

As for the dead-through-shame Conceptiva, she is an unwitting subject for an opportunist Pre-Raphaelite painter and later ekes out a living pretending to talk cockney to perverts (Men get off on her dropped aitches).

But the undoubted Sight of the Week is the splendid Tim McInnerny dressed as a rabbit, subverting A Christmas Carol as the Ghost of Easter, with horrific visions of a future without "Massive Tim".

Robert Webb and Katherine Parkinson return for three new episodes of the rip-snorting historical romp that puts a banger up Dickens. Now over his festive difficulties at debtors' prison, Jedrington Secret-Past (Webb) begins a joint business venture with the innocuously named Harmswell Grimstone (Tim McInnerny) and Jedrington's wife Conceptiva (Parkinson) receives a distressing letter which threatens to send her even barmier than that treacle addiction. It's demented, gag-jammed fun. Above all, this shop sells that most old-fashioned of commodities - proper jokes.

This Dickens spoof revolving around Jedrington - Robert Webb's upright Victorian shopkeeper - first aired as a one-off seasonal indulgence at Christmas. But now - with a plot that sees Jedrington involved with an evil business man as his wife Conceptiva (Katherine Parkinson) struggles to face up to her 'Secret Past' extended over three episodes - it feels drawn out. You sense the series makers straining for some of Blackadder's period irreverence (Tim McInnerny is on hand in support), but the results are like an overlong sketch from That Mitchell And Webb Look or, even worse, a Footlights show, circa 1984. A few good gags aside - such as the Oxford Emotional Dictionary that Jedrington consults to decipher his wife's womanly whims - there's only so many times you can laugh at these quaint Victorians.

Mark Evans's Bleak Expectations worked on Radio 4 because it was the right medium for the sparkling wordplay of his Dickensian pastiche. Transferring to TV, even with a tweaked concept, did its comic style no favours. The recent Christmas special met a flat reception partly because so many comedy stars signed up, slugging it out over thin material. This follow-on series sees Jedrington Secret-Past (Robert Webb) embark on a new venture with Harmswell Grimstone (Tim McInnerny).

After a shaky start, Twenty Twelve developed over its six episodes into a thoroughbred example of that old comedy nag, the mockumentary. Last week's closing episode was case in point - correctly confident in a commission for a second series, it tied up none of its story lines with "734 days to go" and instead delivered a masterclass in comedy, both technical- and character-driven.

Ian's nemesis here was Tony, an embittered old film-maker determined to scupper the equestrian events planned for Greenwich Park. Tony was beautifully played by Tim McInnerny, but the pleasure, as ever, was the sleight of hand on display: the razor-sharp editing, the blink-and-you'll-miss-it sight gags (Tony thumbing through a script entitled "Nail Me To My Car"), the verbose narration. Let's hope Lord Coe can produce something half as entertaining next summer.

As for last night Sally (Olivia Colman), personal assistant to Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville), head of deliverance at the Olympic Deliverance Commission in the always amusing and sporadically very funny Twenty Twelve, I yearned for the happy ending that she herself seemed to yearn for, a meaningful clinch with her boss. Alas, the final episode didn't yield the romantic encounter it had promised, despite Sally continuing to show much more devotion to Ian than he got at home from his needy, nagging, pixellated wife.

It's hard to think of a spoof documentary that has been more fortuitously timed than Twenty Twelve. The first episode poked fun at the Olympic countdown clock, and within less than a day the real clock had malfunctioned. Since then, there's been no end of argy-bargy concerning the future use of the Olympic stadium, with the decision to hand it to West Ham United robustly challenged by Tottenham Hotspur and Leyton Orient. Oh, and marathon man David Bedford has resigned, citing general ineptitude. So it has taken only a very small leap of the imagination into the fictional world of the ODC, whose head of sustainability (Amelia Bullmore) was last night confronted by a man from the London Wildlife Stag Beetle Outreach Project, worried that clearing an area of tree stumps would wreak devastation among his beloved beetles.

Similarly outraged was Tony Ward (Tim McInnerny), a volatile film-maker aghast at the deployment of Greenwich Park for the equestrian events, and the probable daily invasion of "20,000 pubescent girls from second-rate public schools in Surrey with dreadful aspirational mothers". To demonstrate his opposition, Ward had a large pile of horse manure dumped outside the ODC offices, which Fletcher agreed to deal with to "keep it from Seb".

I don't think that's another example of art and life colliding, but it easily could be. Indeed, Ward and Roberts finally came face to face in the Today programme studio, where they were asked a succinct question by James Naughtie, just about the only truly unlikely turn of events in the entire half-hour.

Someone's dumped manure outside the offices of the Olympic Deliverance Commission and Ian has fallen out with his wife. Everyone continues to be thoughtlessly positive despite the setbacksand Siobhan calls another meeting. Meanwhile, Tim McInnerny plays a Greenwich resident opposing the use of the park as the Olympic equestrian venue. He's a former film director working on a treatment called Nail Me to My Car. And a brief look on Ian's face this week suggests he may finally have noticed Sally's blindinglyobvious affection for him. All just wonderfully, superbly done.

A pile of horse manure has been deposited overnight outside the ODC HQ in Canary Wharf. A similar treat awaits Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) outside his suburban home. It's the opening salvo from a separatist movement incensed at proposals to hold Olympic equestrian events in Greenwich Park. Their figurehead (and possibly only member) is Tony Ward - an obnoxious, potty-mouthed nimby played by Tim McInnerny, who gives this spluttering series the lift it needs. As Twenty Twelve reaches the finish line, most of the ODC bods are preoccupied with preserving tree stumps for stag beetles on the Olympic site. Ian's marital discord worsens ("I'm not really sure what there is to say about a 48-hour stony silence") and his vituperative wife makes a pixelated appearance at the office. Plus, there's a little treat for fans of Radio 4's Today programme.

A maverick filmmaker isn't too happy with the decision to stage the equestrian events in Greenwich Park in tonight's final episode of the amusing sitcom which spoofs the organisation of the 2012 Olympics. Tim McInnerny plays the protesting filmmaker - who voices his concerns by dumping a large pile of horse manure outside the Deliverance team's offices. Meanwhile Ian Fletcher's (Hugh Bonneville) marriage unravels further and he finds himself locked out of his house.

Last week Radio 4's Afternoon Play was full of such temptation. In Gary Brown's comedy Prospero, Ariel, Reith and Gill (Wednesday), John Reith, the BBC's first director general (played by Tim McInnerny) faced up to his inner sexual demons, as did the sculptor Eric Gill (Anton Lesser), finishing off his famous Prospero and Ariel statue over the doorway to Broadcasting House. Because it was full of obvious signals (funny voices from Jon Glover, comic whizzing noises) we were clearly warned not to take it literally. Yet there seemed an earnest hankering, in the confessional bits, to show us the author's solemn side too. Mistake.