Harry & Paul

A hefty percentage of Enfield and Whitehouse's sketches are still hitting the target. Tonight's highlights include a skit poking fun at the blandness of Radio 4 documentaries in which presenters are making one called A Walk on the Beach. The duo's nuanced characters are funny even when their lines aren't, as in the case of the old duffers who argue about the sexuality of famous people. The pièce de résistance remains the Dragons' Den take-off, which tonight satirises City traders and features a familiar face, Tim Nice-But-Balding.

After a shaky start, Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse's sketch show is bedding in nicely. Much of the humour feels dated but recurring characters like Marcus, the "I saw you coming" shop owner, and The-Beatles-50-years-on yield some good laughs tonight, while newcomers such as the surgeons' wives, the Lovelock family (who keep pet Northerners) and a chorus of white van men singing a crude "Van Driver's Lament" add enough touches of bizarre brilliance to keep the giggles coming.

The overbearing Italian prime minister goes further than ever tonight in his attempts to twist the arm of his opposite number. He's a typical Harry and Paul creation: funny, brilliantly performed by Paul Whitehouse (as the Berlusconi-style creep) and Harry Enfield (as his deadpan translator), but sailing pretty close to the wind. Van drivers, old people, posh women and Radio 4 documentary-makers also get it in the neck tonight. And remember the controversial pet Geordie sketch? It's back, but with a gleefully offensive twist. Plus the loutish family with the constantly barking dog visit a church to ask, "Do you sell lottery tickets?"

Paul Whitehouse's Aviva ads don't really float our boat but he's back doing what he does best here with some great character work, be it a near-the-nuckle parody of Silvio Berlusconi or playing the chav with the incessantly barking dog (this time he and baseball-capped partner-in-crime Harry Enfield wind up in church running rings around a children's charity worker). Great class-clash comedy.

'We're like Preston and Chantelle!'

How well do TV funnymen Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse know each other? There's only one way to find out: with a revival of gameshow classic Mr & Mrs.

Full marks to Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse for creating a clutch of new characters for this sketch series and not resting on old catchphrases. Although newcomers such as The Benefits and Mr Psycho Bean miss the mark and make one long for the revival of Enfield's Stavros or Wayne Slob, the duo are skilled performers who wring the last drops of comedy from flabby writing. It's still worth tuning in, if only for their brilliantly macabre interpretation of Dragons' Den.

There are touches of brilliance in Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse's latest series. Everyone will have their favourite sketches but the plummy old men in a gentlemen's club discussing which famous people are "quare" are the highlight for me. "If he sounds like a quare and he looks like a quare I should think he's a probable quare," they concur. This week Ian Hislop and, shockingly, David Attenborough are up for discussion. Not all the sketches work so well, but for fans there's good news: Café Polski is back in all its sad glory.

This is how sketch comedy should be done, James Corden and Mathew Horne please please please take note. Actually forget that, just please stick to Gavin & Stacey.

Like every show of this kind, Harry and Paul has it's hits and misses, but you won't get a better ratio than with these old collaborators. There are a few original pieces in the second helping of their latest series, including an opening take-down of bed-hopping Silvio Berlusconi, but much of this material is similar to other stuff we have seen before in one form or another. The two old aristocrats denouncing the entire TV community (even David Attenborough?!) as 'quares', remind us of the perpetually pickled Rowley Birkin QC and the whole potato skit reminds us the hilarious Mr Cholmondley-Warner, but the Enfield and Whitehouse have a sense of timing and a panaché that makes that seem irrelevant.

For me, watching Enfield as the reserved English gent encouraging his son's potato hobby is just as rewarding as listening to the faux-Public Information programmes which lampooned the early days of television. Parking Patewayo, the traffic warden whose prolific exploits are potrayed as children's educational programming is another sure-fire hit, as are the pair's stick-in-the-mud ex footballers. "Go an' get the bloke love.."

I need to tell you about the brilliance of the new series of Harry And Paul. In fact, within seconds of it starting I was screeching like a car alarm at three in the morning, mostly at the scabrous spoof of Dragon's Den and the traffic warden send-up, Parking Pataweyo, which wobbled deliciously close to being unacceptable.

There was one odd thing about the show though, and that was Enfield's obsession with the top and bottom of society, with swaggering chavs and gibbering toffs. Brilliant though it all was, maybe now that Enfield is all grey and round and pretty much Britain's honorary professor of sketch shows, he could have more of a pop at the modern middle classes as well as the chavs and poshies. There's certainly plenty to laugh at.

There was a time when Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse were on top of the comedy game. Enfield's Loadsamoney defined an era, while Kevin and Perry provided one of the great portrayals of male teenagerdom. Whitehouse's Fast Show, meanwhile, was the apotheosis of the sketch show, pounding viewers with catchphrases and lightning-quick vignettes. So it is such a shame to see what has become of them.

Enfield recently said "we're just doing stuff for people who don't watch much comedy, but might like us" - well, job half-done. Because anyone who does watch comedy wouldn't last two minutes with this. A Dragons' Den pastiche is nicely set up, with a particularly good impression of the smug Peter Jones, but it tails off, and feels like children acting in the playground. Similarly, are we really meant to find humour in two old boys in a gentlemen's club wondering whether David Cameron is "queer"? Comedy should inspire, infuriate, engage in some way; this just sends you to sleep. Already relegated from BBC1 to BBC2, how long can it be before it's dropped altogether?