Regardless of the fact that the TV schedules are already rammed with the damned things, all sharing near-identical formats, television continues to spew out comedy panel shows. Channel 4's W…
For a civilization lost in the mists of time, Atlantis proved surprisingly easy to locate. All our hero Jason (Jack Donnelly) had to do was head straight down in a one-man submarine, turn le…
Watching Downton Abbey, it occurred to me that it is basically Boardwalk Empire but without the violence. Or sex. Or drama. ITV's ratings juggernaut returned for a fourth series with a featu…
Jason Byrne has a very endearing quality about him, which is just as well, as his new sitcom Father Figure has precious little else going for it. Byrne plays a house husband attending to the…
I love BBC4. I truly, madly, deeply love it so much that when my brother-in-law recently suggested, in all seriousness, that it be replaced by a channel devoted exclusively to Formula 1 moto…
Sharon Osbourne has returned to The X Factor, and the show's producers are not about to let anybody forget it. In the absence of Simon Cowell, Osbourne brings some much-needed star quality t…
Is everyone who took part in the First World War dead? Good, let's desecrate their sufferings and sacrifices with a rubbish sitcom. I was really looking forward to Chickens, Sky1's take on B…
Primarily a comedy panel show, with elements of The Generation Game thrown in for good measure, I Love My Country stretches out over an arse-numbing 45 minutes, each more dismal than the las…
There is a great deal to like and admire about BBC Scotland's two-part conspiracy thriller The Field of Blood. It has a feisty, likeable and vulnerable heroine in idealistic young journalist…
I first saw ITV's You Saw Them Here First, narrated by snarky Robert Webb, over on BBC1 when it was called Before They Were Famous, narrated by snarky Angus Deayton. The format, showing mild…
The Typhleotris is a freshwater fish that lives in Madagascar's limestone caves, a habitat of such consummate darkness that nature has not bothered to provide it with eyes. But even the Typh…
Broadcast over consecutive evenings, Run followed the stories of four disparate and desperate characters in crisis on a south London housing estate, whose lives, and fates, are tentatively c…
Count Arthur Strong, the award-winning jewel in BBC Radio 4's comedy crown, has moved to television, prompting much rejoicing and eager anticipation across the social networks. It would seem…
Your Face Sounds Familiar is a terrible title for a terrible show in which not particularly famous celebrities get to perform not very accurate impersonations of pop stars. Remind you of any…
Congratulations to Andrea Begley for winning The Voice UK " The Live Final, defeating Leah McFall by popular vote. Not only was McFall the bookies' hot favourite, but judges Jessie J and Wil…
The actor's life, it has been observed more than once, is full of swings and roundabouts. Take Max Irons, for example, currently cutting a dash as Edward IV in BBC1's historical drama The Wh…
With the average age of Britain's Got Talent contestants plummeting with each passing year, it will be only a matter of time before Ant and Dec won't be able to move backstage for chaperones…
"Secrets in a marriage are like dry rot in a house," opines newly retired lollipop lady Pauline Paradise (Alison Steadman) to an off-screen interviewer. Her husband Ken (Duncan Preston), slu…
The award-winning Horrible Histories has returned for a triumphant fifth series, putting its distinct comic twist upon epochs long gone, plus a few that are, disconcertingly, more recent. In…
Like a cold car on a cold morning, Bonnie Tyler's Eurovision Song Contest performance took a while to get started, but once she had left behind the vocal constraints of Believe in Me's low-r…
Woody Allen once famously declared Nazis in shiny boots as being beyond satire. For esteemed comic musician Tom Lehrer, it was the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger. For t…
"Those bastards have bombed my crime scene," exclaims maverick police pathologist Dr Lennox Collins (Patrick Kennedy). The bastards in question being the Luftwaffe, the crime scene being the…
Rape offers such a rich vein of comic potential that I am bewildered as to why the world of sitcom has overlooked the subject for so long. But not to worry, because Vicious remedies the...
Comedy duo Watson and Oliver are back with a second series of sketches, despite the somewhat lacklustre reception their first outing received. So all credit to BBC Comedy for keeping faith w…
Britain's Got Talent returned to serve up more of the same meticulously stage-managed emotional manipulation disguised as a talent show, with Simon Cowell, David Walliams, Alesha Dixon and A…