Vincent Franklin

Simon Amstell has cunningly managed to deflect potential criticism of his acting skills in this sitcom in which he plays a version of himself.

"I'm doing vulnerability," he explained in last week's opener to season two. "I'm stiff in real life."

In which case, his performance here is absolutely bang on the money as he surfs the lumpy seas of his family's bitter squabbles with a rictus grin that is pitched midway between polite boredom and panic.

What this sitcom does so well is capture the ­claustrophobia of ­families who are close almost to the point of throttling one another.

"Isn't it nice we can all sit in a room together without any tension," his mother Tanya (Rebecca Front) lies tonight as her sister, Liz, arrives for another visit.

And Liz's husband Barry (Vincent Franklin) joins the cast this week.

He's a tedious, self-important git with post-nasal drip who is annoyingly reluctant to help Simon escape from his grandma's house by agreeing to rent him his flat in Soho.

The humour and the language in Grandma's House isn't ­nana-friendly.

But, as Simon and his cousin Adam discover grandpa's little secret up in the loft, there's a gag tonight about Jurassic Park that is a clear contender for one-liner of the year.

Series two goes up a gear when the superb Vincent Franklin arrives as Barry, husband of ratty aunt Liz (Samantha Spiro). Barry has mucus and a morbid obsession with rolling news, but he also has a flat in London that Simon Amstell (Simon Amstell) wants to borrow.

Barry fits right in as another source of tension that can't quite be smothered by domestic ritual. His pomposity is a good counterpoint to Clive (James Smith), who's getting more vulnerable, stuck in the loft fixing a leak. Clive emerges at the end for a tremendous comic pay-off.

The BBC4 comedy makes the move to BBC2. There will come a time soon, after the cost is tallied and the results examined, when the 2012 London Olympics will be no laughing matter. Until then, it's fair game. Writer-director John Morton previously helmed the great People Like Us, and here the tone is similar and the standard just as high. Set in the Olympic Delivery Committee, complete with dreadful logo, we meet the excellent cast - Hugh Bonneville, Olivia Coleman, Jessica Hynes, Vincent Franklin - as they prepare to relaunch their website. A terrific start.

There will come a time soon, after the cost is tallied and the results examined, when the 2012 London Olympics will be no laughing matter. Until then, it's fair game. Writer/director John Morton previously helmed the great People Like Us, and here the tone is similar and the standard just as high.

Set in the Olympics Deliveries Committee, complete with dreadful logo, we meet the excellent cast - Hugh Bonneville, Olivia Coleman, Jessica Hynes, Vincent Franklin - as they prepare to relaunch their website.

A terrific start, mostly stolen by Hynes's spot-on PR agent.

Deliciously skewering everyone from marketing creatives and PRs to web designers, John Morton's mockumentary (narrated by David Tennant) about the "Olympic Deliverance" team preparing for 2012 appears both painful and probable. It is the characterisation that is so sharp and knowing, while the execution is all the better for its subtlety.

Heading the team is the exasperated Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville), who frequently despairs in his hapless staff. Aside from the bluff Nick Jowett (Vincent Franklin), who is prone to uttering, "I don't care who you are. I'm sorry, I'm from Yorkshire and I'm not having it", Fletcher is painted as the only one with a glimmer of competence. An early crisis is that the 2012 countdown clock has been designed by a curmudgeonly British artist, who refuses to explain how it works, or admit that it is flawed. It was commissioned by Head of Brand, Siobhan Sharpe (Jessica Hynes), a firm believer in "adspeak", who is often framed as clueless. Her suggestions for national heroes to be Olympic torch-bearers include Bruce Forsyth and Gok Wan, and she confuses the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy with the Welsh singer Duffy. Meanwhile, her colleague Kay Hope (Amelia Bullmore), Head of Sustainability, wonders if the taekwondo hall might make a good donkey sanctuary once the Games themselves are finished.