Tom Sutcliffe

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy is cheap, messy, energetic and... eventually... funny. You may begin thinking it's just garish self-indulgence, but then, after you've been breathing the atmosphere of the planet he lives on for a while, you get a bit giddy and start to giggle. Characters include Sergeant Raymond Boombox, a New York detective with a garrulous knife wound on his arm. If you haven't come out in a rash after reading that, it may be safe for you to watch.

Stella, Ruth Jones's new comedy for Sky1, has a lot more emotional texture to it. It began with a horribly clunky line of exposition: "I was only 17 when I had you, remember?" Stella told her oldest son as she visited him in prison. "Not much cop, am I?... Past 40, divorced, three kids, haven't had sex for years." After that, though, it just steadily got better - a rueful account of midlife crisis that divides its affections equally between the lead character and the small Welsh town in which she lives. It got better fast as well.

"Everything's... still... all right then?" Stella asked her son hesitantly, after bringing him up to date with the number of siblings he has. "I'm not being bummed, no," he replied wearily. Stella's best friend is an alcoholic undertaker, constantly monitoring her ability to drive the hearse with her own breathalyzer and struggling not to get the giggles when her clients' grief finds wayward expression. And the thing is full of moments of untidy, unexplained comedy, such as the sequence when we discovered a male character watching Cranford, approvingly muttering, "Dirty, dirty bitches" to himself.

Last Night's Viewing: Felix & Murdo

Felix & Murdo was recognisably Blackadderish in its approach to history, silly and inventive and with a good line in visual gags. I'd happily watch more.

I realised that The Royal Bodyguard despised me about five or six minutes in. Mark Bussell and Justin Sbresni's new comedy began with a backstory prologue to introduce us to its central character, Guy Hubble, a blazered ex-military jobsworth who has a job supervising the Buckingham Palace car park.

As the Royal Household wait for the Queen to climb into the royal coach, Hubble spots a stray crisp packet on the gravel and leaps forward to spare Her Majesty this distressing sight. And then, seeing that one of the Coldstream Guards is asleep at his post, he inflates the bag and pops it in his face, with a bang like a pistol going off. The coach horses bolt, with the Sovereign dangling from the steps. Having set this disaster in motion, Hubble then puts things rights, seconds away from a crash that would have put Prince Charles on the throne. How did this idiot get a senior post as a royal bodyguard? That's how.

It's not really a complicated comic idea, this. Think Inspector Clouseau and you're halfway there. Hubble, played by David Jason with a bantam-strut of self-regard, is chaos in trousers. But just in case we're a little slow on the uptake, the writers supply an exasperated superior to underline things for us. And then he finishes his little speech with the ponderous line: "With him in that job... anything could happen." Well, thank you for the clarification, but I'd actually worked that out five minutes ago. The character's the idiot, not the viewer. What followed was, as they say, "predictably hilarious", which means not terribly hilarious at all, unless you have a thing about seeing David Jason in his underwear hanging off a balcony. Nothing wrong with a cartoon, of course, but all too often this one is crudely drawn.

Clashing with a pair of sinister Slav assassins who talked about "shaking the vurld to its core", Hubble managed to cock everything up until his final cock-up inadvertantly saved Her Majesty and he was the hero of the hour again. It contained two sight-gags that made me laugh - one when Hubble attempted to eat a lobster with a knife and fork and another when a room-service trolley concealing him began inching out of the room propelled by his fingers - but another attempt at critical charity failed. I wrote in my notes that I thought the faults lay more in the direction than the script, since if it was played a little more deadpan some of the comedy would work much better. But then the credits revealed that the writers had also produced and directed it, so I'm afraid they're just going to have to carry the can.

OK. It's 8.30. That's Christmas over." It was a dream of sorts, uttered by a woman who knew she was at the sharp end of the wrapping-paper-clearance, greasy-pots end of the annual celebration and, just in case you were wondering, it was half past eight in the morning, as Sue from Outnumbered began the familiar cat-drive involved in getting the family to the airport on time.

This year, she had vowed, it was going to be different. They were going away for a short break in the Canaries after a stressful few months that had included bedding infestation and over-reaction by the social services. This being Outnumbered, of course, several towering hurdles stood between that consummation and the chaotic starting line of Christmas breakfast. For the moment, nobody is going anywhere. Ben is a little disappointed with the contents of The Dangerous Book for Boys ("There's nothing about firework shoes in here. Look. 'Grinding an Italic Nib'. What's dangerous about that?") Karen, the six-year old, is in the bathroom shaving (for some reason not explained) and Sue herself is fretting about whether to leave Grandad in hospital over the festive season. "We need a break from Mum needing a break," pleaded Jake meaningfully when cancellation was mooted.

It must be a little wearing maintaining this level of anxiety and there are some signs that Outnumbered is feeling its age. This is partly because the children themselves are growing up but can't entirely be allowed to do so if the comic balance is to be maintained (if only they were drawn like Bart and Lisa). In fact, now and then, there's a sense that they've become caricatures of themselves, straining for effects that seemed entirely fresh in the first series. Characters in a comedy can't really learn, of course, but the underlying naturalism of Outnumbered (its implicit promise that parenthood really is like this) also results in an odd strain between laughter and credulity. Wouldn't they have packed the night before, you find yourself asking, and perhaps dropped in on Grandad on the way to the airport when everything was sorted? Are they being clueless by design? The answer to the last question is "Yes, idiot, they're made-up", but that isn't what you want to be thinking about in a comedy.

It's still funnier than any other family sitcom, as good at sight gags (Ben marching purposefully past the window with a pickaxe at one point) as it is with dialogue. "Oh, look... there's the Queen doing her Christmas thing," said Grandpa brightly, watching the television in his hospital room. "No, Grandad," replied Jake patiently, "that's John Simpson." And though I don't buy for a second that parents this scarred would have let Ben make the sandwiches for the car journey unsupervised (he offers a choice of treacle and mayonnaise or chocolate and stilton bap), they essentially earned the moment of uplift with which all Christmas programmes are obliged to end - in this case, a family sing-song round Grandad's hospital bed.

In Lapland - chillingly described as "heartwarming" in the Radio Times - it was the Northern Lights that provided the cure-all for family dysfunction, uniting a bickering Birkenhead family in innocent wonder at the end of a trip to visit Santa. Michael Wynne's drama had been so sour and bad-tempered up to this point, though, that the sudden swerve into bonhomie felt deeply unconvincing. One rapprochement - between a beleaguered husband and his endlessly whining wife - came about because he finally lost his patience and snapped, "Will you shut your fat gob for once!" a remark that I'm sure spoke for many viewers but seemed implausible as a catalyst for festive peace. There were some good lines, but I still came out thinking Mandy's early grumble had been a hazardous hostage to fortune: "Christmas," she said winningly, "is all about sitting on a sofa watching shite and eating crap."

The weekend's viewing: Black Mirror, Sun, Channel 4

I can't remember whether I said something cynical when Channel 4 promised that it would divert the river of money it poured into Big Brother to irrigate original, one-off dramas, but if I did, may I offer a cautious apology with regards to Black Mirror. It was beautifully realised, with numerous tart little touches in the design, and nicely performed too.

The Café review

It might take a while, but these characters could become as lovable to us as they already clearly are to their creators.

I wasn't entirely sure about last week's Rev, which seemed to make a slightly hesitant start to its second series. But this week's episode completely restored my faith. From the opening scene, in which Colin was discovered shooting "crack squirrels" in the church garden, to the long sequence at the end in which Tom Hollander showed us what it looks like when a vicar accidentally takes ecstasy ("I'm off my tits, Lord... Colin did it... naughty Colin" ), it was funny, sharp, beautifully written and full of charity. I don't actually believe God exists, but if he did I think he'd chuckle omnisciently.

Rev is a much kinder comedy than Life's Too Short, and prompts a different kind of question, which is, how kind can a comedy get before it stops being funny? The success of the first series means that they can show off with a big-star cameo too; in this case, Ralph Fiennes, who did an eerily pious turn as the Bishop of London. Due to a misunderstanding, Adam finds himself up for a Pride of Britain Award he doesn't really deserve. With little more than a penetrating gaze of Christian understanding, the Bishop gets him to own up and forgo his moment in the limelight. It was a scene suffused with moral seriousness, but it didn't deliver a lot of laughs. The show is better (and more lovable) when it seems to celebrate human weakness. But then it's lovable enough itself to be forgiven the odd shortcoming.