Tom Sutcliffe

In the last of his Black Mirror series, Charlie Brooker pulled off another unexpected turn, setting us up for a crass "all politicians are con artists" satire but leaving you thinking a little harder about the consequences of such blanket cynicism. The storyline featured a melancholy television comic, trapped in the career cul-de-sac of providing the voice for a scabrous animated bear, who conducts Ali G-style interviews with unsuspecting politicians. When his producer decides he should stand in a by-election, he's horrified to discover that the electorate find him more interesting than the issues - his feelings further complicated by the fact that he's fallen for the Labour candidate. Like last week's drama, it felt a little rough around the edges here and there. But I wish we had more roughness like it.

Last night's viewing: Common Ground, Sky Atlantic

The good news? You've just got a commission for a one-off comedy drama from Sky Atlantic. The bad news? You've got less than 12 minutes of airtime from soup to nuts. Taken together, Common Ground, a series of short films all set in the same stretch of south London, might eventually amount to more than the sum of its parts.

TV review: Black Mirror

I wasn't too sure about the science of Ash's resuscitation, but I thought the emotions were engineered pretty well.

Being Eileen is a spin-off of Michael Wynne's Christmas drama Lapland, about a Merseyside family finding healing and reconciliation on a Christmas jolly. Now it's been more tightly focused on Sue Johnston's character, a widow wistfully hankering after some grander meaning in life. It's all right, I guess, if effortful implausibilities for comic effect aren't a deal-breaker for you. But I'm not quite sure why the spinning off was felt to be necessary.

Derek a little too full of self-congratulation

If you'd asked me, I wouldn't have brought Derek back for a series. To my mind, the pilot of Ricky Gervais's comedy about an assistant in a retirement home had already fully explored its awkward - and testing - balance of comedy and emotion.

Last night's viewing: Derek, Channel 4

Oddly, in fact, it's Derek's redeeming qualities that are the hardest to take - a sense of self-congratulation at the refinement of its own sentiments that has a little bit of the bully in it too.

"This is a post-watershed programme and contains adult content and language," read an advisory note on the screener version of Way to Go, a new BBC3 comedy about euthanasia.

Way to Go isn't very "adult", the word here essentially used as a code for "involves swearing and sex". It is quite intriguing, though - a black comedy in which three friends, all down on their luck, find a new career offering euthanasia without the airfare (not so much Dignitas as Indignitas). Scott gets the idea when his neighbour offers him a pair of George Best's old football boots in return for an easy exit, and he then enlists his mate Cozzo, a fast-food-equipment engineer, who constructs a suicide kit he calls the McFlurry of Death. Too much of the comedy is dependent on wild over-reaction but Blake Harrison, who played the thick one in The Inbetweeners, is good as Scott, who continually has to explain to his colleagues that normal business rules do not apply. "There is no word of mouth, you idiot," he says, when they're discussing routes to expansion. "If we do a good job our clients are dead."

Last night's viewing: Bob Servant Independent, BBC4

There are rough edges here, but Cox speeds you past them by the ebullience of his performance, and quite often I found myself simultaneously thinking that it was all getting a bit silly and laughing at it at the same time.

Last Night's Viewing: Funny Business, BBC2

"Wherever you look now money's spoiled it," grumbled John Cleese. After which we got a shot of Monaco harbour. An arch comment? An illustration? A hint of what's to come? I'm still not sure.

The revived Yes, Prime Minister, returning after a 24-year absence, at least came in on the perfect political cue. "Dealing with Europe isn't about achieving success," David Haig's exasperated PM tells the head of his Policy Unit, "it's about concealing failure." But that kind of timing isn't what comedy is about and in two ways this was a beat or two off. For one thing, you just can't pretend that The Thick of It never happened, as this seemed to do in featuring a scene of political advisers wincing as their boss flounders through an interview. For another, Henry Goodman can't quite expunge the memory of Nigel Hawthorne's silky perfection. Further consultation required.