Tom Sutcliffe

The last episode of Twenty Twelve (and it pains me to even write those words) went out with a Sopranos finish, cutting to black at a critical moment as Ian worked himself up to say something of large significance to Sally. I still can't work out whether this was a cruel withholding of a consummation we've been longing for, or a wise decision to let us fill in the blank ourselves. But I can't hold it against the series, which has ridden the razor's edge between straight transcription and satirical exaggeration with near-perfect balance. Highlights this week included the discovery that the opening fireworks might trigger the army's ground-to-air missiles and last-minute glitches with a cultural commission involving mass bell ringing (that one was transcription surely). Lowlights next week include the fact that it isn't on any more and we have to swallow our Olympibollocks neat.

Absolutely Fabulous built the last of its three specials around Eddy and Patsy's wild excitement about the Olympics. It isn't the sport they're interested in, obviously, but the imminent arrival of Michael Douglas, who has rented Eddy's house and who they see as a passport to A-list Olympic parties. "I shall be wearing my buttocks as a head-dress by the time that man arrives," announced Eddy, who plans a major make-over.

Unfortunately, she's not been paying very close attention to the calendar and doesn't realise she's left it too late, a mistake she feels is forgivable: "It's been everywhere for five bloody years! Excuse me if I missed that it's actually bloody started. It's been like tinnitus." Dames Kelly Holmes and Tanni Grey-Thompson and Stella McCartney offered themselves up as straight-women for Patsy and Eddy's faux pas and there was a brief, slightly baffling visit to the Olympic Stadium, during which both women enjoyed an unconvincing reverie of athletic glory. And then, after quite a few raucous laughs, it just stopped, as if nobody had quite worked out where the finish tape was. But I did enjoy Eddy's protest as she was bundled out of the stadium by a security guard: "You're discouraging me from taking up sport!"

Twenty Twelve exploited the potency of deferred pleasure last night with the return of Sally, Ian's haplessly lovelorn PA, recruited by the perky Daniel after he was headhunted for Lord Coe's team. Her arrival in Ian's hospital room, in the midst of a cloud of self-deprecation and apology, was wonderfully touching. This was partly down to Olivia Colman, who can do more by lowering her gaze than many actors can do with their entire body. But it was also to the credit of John Morton's script, which sits very sharp satire on a foundation of beautifully understated character studies. Without the latter the former might get a bit thin. But with them it is irresistible. He can write a punchline too, one of which might serve as a useful slogan for the Home Office team currently dealing with security: "If we get this wrong we're in danger of running out of feet to shoot ourselves in."

BUG, a television version of Adam Buxton's very hip BFI showcases, is a triumph of personal character above all. The elements of the programme are dead simple. He shows music videos he's found on YouTube, cueing up all the visuals from his laptop. Then he reads out a selection of the comments underneath. Essentially that's it. It's not easy to capture the delicious flavour but this might help. Buxton brightly cued up one of the self-made films which each show includes like this: "Now, the video involves a lot of real explosions... all of which were very easy and fun to set up. So why not try something similar at home?" The onscreen title read: "MORON WARNING: DON'T. OBVIOUSLY". I'm laughing typing it, but not nearly as much as when I watched.

"The more I learn about Hitler the more I dislike him," said Alan Partridge sagely in Welcome to the Places of My Life, his personal guide to "Albion's hindquarters", "the Wales of the East"- or Norfolk, as the rest of us know it.

Hitler had come up because of the Führer's plans to make Norwich Town Hall a centre of regional government in the event of a successful German invasion of England, a historical detail that Partridge the film-maker (his name was on the credits as "director") took as a cue to fade up an echoey Hitler speech as Partridge the presenter stared pensively out over Norwich market. He'd already done a priceless bit of Schama-ing inside the building - storming through the corridors as he vividly recreated the terrible night on which Norwich came within a whisker of getting a blanket imposition of night-time parking fees. And now here he was tackling Norwich's place in global history. Is there nothing this man can't handle?

Steve Coogan can probably now do Partridge in his sleep. The character is fully there, with all its tics and grace notes, from the little sideways skitter of the eyes at the camera that betrays his essential amateurishness to the wildly inappropriate grandiosity. "This is my coalface, my canvas, my lathe," said Alan, leading the camera into the microphone-rigged broom cupboard that is his centre of operations at North Norfolk Digital. If he wasn't such a creep there would be something almost heroic about his determination to finesse his come-down into a professional choice, and the eagerness with which he enlists any detail, however banal, to help him do it. Introducing us to the second of the significant locations in his life, the Riverside Leisure Centre, he noted that it "boasts a controversial swooped roof" and then unwisely conducted an in-pool interview with the resident hydrotherapist, his questions getting increasingly spluttery as his energy flagged.

Real Partridge purists, though, may have felt that offered an image of the programme itself, which started confidently but later had some difficulty keeping its head above water. It wasn't that it wasn't funny - there were wonderful moments all the way through. It was just that it was muddled and a little impure, in a way the Iannucci-scripted series almost never were. So, while you could certainly imagine a Partridge-directed documentary including his pontifications about how to make your own walking stick ("rather than one of those aluminium ones made in China by kids, I prefer a traditional one, made in Britain... by trees"), it was harder to work out why he would have included a shot of him drooling all over the Range Rover salesman. Both funny, but not quite funny in compatible ways. Which, I can quite see, may well come across as unnecessarily picky.

Walking and Talking, Kathy Burke's new series, is essentially constructed out of Kath and Mary's walk home from school. Kath has the details of Burke's own childhood - alcoholic father, no mother and a tendency to score higher for Personality than Looks when her friends fill in the teen-mag love questionnaires. But this is played lightly here, not as emotional ballast. Kath introduces herself as a bundle of enthusiasms - for X-Ray Spex, Keith Waterhouse, Kes and Play for Today - and the mood is consistently sweet and innocent. When her friend Mary questions the knowledge of an older boy at school, Kath - the more knowing of the two - replies: "He's 18, Mary. Of course he knows everything!" Like Welcome to the Places of My Life, it's a bit all over the place formally, dropping in animations and sketch-like sequences featuring two nuns (one of whom is played by Burke herself). But the mood is consistent throughout - deeply affectionate for the child she was.

Last night's viewing: Alan Partridge, Walking & Talking

A review of two new comedies on Sky Atlantic.

I'll reserve judgement on Dead Boss, Sharon Horgan and Holly Walsh's comedy about a woman wrongly convicted of murder. First episodes are often awkward affairs, and this one didn't break the rule. But I liked the dodgy solicitor who offered a "no win, some fee" service and there was a nice moment when Horgan's character found her cocky insults about a prison tough and her cronies being repeated to them by a guilelessly supportive cell-mate. "I have been completely taken out of context," she stammers, raising the question of exactly what context would take the sting out of "mentally stunted trolls". Give it time.

Review: A Short History of Everything Else

There's currently a bit too much quiz in the mix and not quite enough banter, though Marcus Brigstocke warmed up nicely and the clip researcher had done a pretty decent job.

A Ventriloquist's Story: Her Master's Voice was centred on a perfect Louis Theroux-equse subject, a vents' convention in Kentucky to which Nina Conti travelled with the puppets left to her by her mentor and lover, Ken Campbell. In its way, this too was a study of the psychological tolls of performance and self-exposure, with Conti musing on the odd business of out-sourcing part of your consciousness to a glove puppet. But it was a lot of other things besides - an odd, often uncomfortable film that dared to go to some very dark places.

Conti lay in bed at one point talking to herself about an abortion she'd had, delivering one half of the conversation in the person of her dead lover. At another she staged the "death" of her own sidekick monkey, dissolving into alarmingly plausible grief. I'm not convinced she'll ever be a great ventriloquist, but there was a risk and rawness here that I think would have made Ken Campbell proud.