Tom Sutcliffe

One of the questions you might ask about Life's Too Short, the new comedy from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, is how it would have worked if its central character wasn't a dwarf. Life's Too Short is built around an actor called Warwick Davis, who plays a comically tweaked version of himself. Like the real Warwick, this one was an Ewok in Return of the Jedi and runs a talent agency hiring out other dwarfs ("I've had a lot of success and this is my chance to pay that forward"). Unlike the real Warwick (I assume), this one is in the middle of a messy divorce and looking for a way to pay off a massive tax bill. And one of the striking things is how much of the comedy depends less on his physical stature than on his status, as a man whose opinion of himself is considerably larger than the world's. Warwick is playing Warwick but he's also playing Brent/Millman/Gervais, that slippery amalgam of real character and comic invention that props up nearly everything Gervais does.

You saw it again and again, in the unmistakably Brentish way that Warwick added self-serving footnotes to embarrassing footage ("Oohh..." he said nervously, as his estranged wife lets rip. "Showing off"); in the little sideways glances at the camera; in the unwitting revelations of his self-centredness. None of those jokes would be substantially different if Davis was two feet taller. Similarly, Warwick's incompetent accountant (who doesn't know how to do percentages on his calculator) would be equally funny with an averagely sized client. And the cameo in which Liam Neeson turned up at Gervais and Merchant's office for advice on comedy improvisation didn't even need Warwick to be in the room (though he actually was there, keeping a chair warm). A lot of it, in other words, would have worked in exactly the same way, though it would have been a good deal more vulnerable to charges of recycling.

Which leaves us with the jokes that are inextricably related to Davis's height. Some of these play mischievously with prejudices. "You're a dwarf. How can you not know 'Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho'?" Warwick said to one of his performers incredulously. Others exploit his height, such as a long sequence in which he had to enlist a scornful passer-by to help him get into Gervais and Merchant's office (the door buzzer was too high). And one or two edge us uncomfortably close to simply laughing at little people. As Warwick pompously compared himself to Martin Luther King and talked of his dream that "one day dwarfs will walk equally", his rhetoric was undermined by the sight of him falling out of his car. It's a punchline moment, but is it a joke about a self-deceiving man or one whose legs don't reach the ground? I'm still not entirely sure, and I suspect that Gervais in particular would be happy about that. If you want to take offence, be his guest. He's certainly made it easy for you. But be warned that you may have to suppress a laugh as you do it, and then think about what exactly you're suppressing.

Thank goodness for Fresh Meat, which has steadily been building its credentials as a comedy-drama, rather than straightforward sitcom. Last night, it was Vod's turn to do a presentation for her English seminar group, an assignment she started well (she'd plagiarized an Amazon reader's review of Midnight's Children to get underway) but couldn't quite sustain. "I never read it!" she yelled defiantly about half a minute in. "I got to the bit where the boy with a nose like a cucumber realises he can read people's minds and I thought, 'No, sorry, I'm not having this'." Robert Webb made a excellent cameo appearance as the needy geology lecturer and Oregon thrilled to the fact that Professor Shales's wife was being all sophisticated and soigné about their affair: "It's like something from a Woody Allen movie or something," she told Vod. "Yeah. Dirty old man and pretty young girl. I think I've seen that one." Its best jokes aren't quotable, though, because they come out of that strange amalgam of what the screen delivers and what the audience already knows and feels. Not just for students.

What happened to impressionists? There was a time when it was the blue-chip form of light entertainment, and no weekend or Christmas was complete without a special. But the steam seems to have gone out of it a little these days. The Impressions Show has its moments (Debra Stephenson gets that mad vamp off Dragons' Den to a T and Jon Culshaw nails Paul McCartney and Prince Charles). But all too often if you close your eyes you wouldn't have a clue who was being lampooned. It gives an impression of being entertaining, but not always a convincing one.

Can a Scottish comedy find acceptance in English living rooms is a question being tested by Burnistoun, a sketch show from north of the border. Subtitles would occasionally be helpful, but I laughed a lot, particularly at the racehorse who took exception to a punters' insults and turned up in the back seat of his car to give him a good hoofing.

Last night's viewing: Holy Flying Circus, BBC4

On paper, Holy Flying Circus looked as if it might be a perfect storm of embarrassment. It wasn't perfect - the final resolution, with protesters and Pythons reconciling in a BBC green room after Muggeridge and Mervyn Stockwood's chat-show performance was a little too pat - but by then I liked it too much to really care.

Spy, a new sitcom on Sky1, is very promising. "How was school?" a dad asks his son. "Torpid," replies his witheringly precocious nine-year-old. Thirty seconds in and already more laughs than Comic Strip managed in an hour.

At least Downton Abbey gives you laughs, which is more than you can say for The Comic Strip Presents - The Hunt for Tony Blair. Family loyalty would explain the commissioning of this "satire", since Comic Strip helped launch the channel, but I'm not sure anything can explain its transmission. The pastiche was undisciplined (what was Barbara Windsor doing in a 39 Steps parody, other than showing that Ronni Ancona can do the voice?), the script flabby and seemingly unedited ("Here, I was back in the city. Anonymous... apart from my sack-cloth toga") and the plot utterly devoid of satirical bite. It should have been cordoned off with crime-scene tape, not broadcast.

Susan Boyle took a brief cameo in Rab C Nesbitt, appearing from beyond a copy of Variety in the Giblets pub, where she was notionally judging Govan's Got Talent, in which Ella and Mary were appearing as a pair of singing char-ladies called The Scrubbers. Neither The Scrubbers nor Boyle would be advised to give up the day job.

If you were to try and piece together the genetic make-up of This Is Jinsy, Sky Atlantic's comedy, the family tree would run something like this: Grandfather: Spike Milligan; Parents: The League of Gentleman and Vic and Bob; Distant Cousin: The Mighty Boosh. There's a fine running gag about a talent show judged by a dog called Sandy (his paw hovers between two buttons marked "Woof" and "Enoof" after he's watched the acts). I couldn't put it better than one of the characters in last night's episode: "I think I can safely say, without fear of exaggeration, that I quite enjoyed it."

Fresh Meat, now that it's moved on to writers other than Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, occasionally lapses into Yoof callow, a form of comic writing that privileges the brutally scatological over anything more nuanced. There was a nasty exchange in last night's episode, which stuck out like a... well, let's say a besmirched appendage. But there's also much better stuff, whether it was the silly comedy of Howard talking through his all-you-can-eat buffet tactics (which include a concealed bin-liner) or a lovely line from Tony Gardner's Professor Shales, who at first looked like a cocky sexual predator but has now revealed himself to be overshadowed by his more successful wife: "Jean thinks I'm Plath," he whined to Oregon as he attempted to seduce her. "But I'm not Plath, I'm Hughes." Cut the self-conscious filth from some comedies and there wouldn't be a lot left. Cut it from Fresh Meat and you'd be left with the best stuff.