Radio Times

"A sitcom," Chris Morris once said, "isn't usually the right tool for satire." Fair point, perhaps; after all, a show like My Family is about as sharp as a bag of marshmallows. But in the case of Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn's Yes Minister, we're dealing with a definite exception to that rule.

Yes Minister is not only a delight to watch but also a sharply observed, engaging and utterly iconoclastic look at the British political system. Instead of caricaturing the preposterous posturing that we're all privy to in the House of Commons, Yes Minister takes us behind...

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I have to start by making a confession. I wasn't exactly chuffed when the news broke that Catherine Tate was to play the Doctor's new companion. Yes, I admit it, I joined countless other fans in a chorus of "What is Russell T Davies thinking?" I'd been unfortunate enough to catch a few minutes of Tate's comedy sketch show, and I couldn't see anything remotely funny about it. In Christmas special The Runaway Bride, I found her character, Donna Noble, brash, mouthy and annoying.

But as series four of Doctor Who progresses, I'm getting fat on...

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Whenever Sex and the City comes under attack for being silly and shallow, there's a female columnist ready to leap to its defence and list its feminist credentials. But the whole point of SATC is its shameless fascination with the things that make so many women tick - fashion, relationships and gossip - delivered with brilliant comic irony. SATC fans don't need a lecture in female morality and the evils of consumerism. Virtually every joke in the show points up the absurdity of lusting after designer shoes or dating totally inappropriate men. But in doing...

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You've heard of Wags. Now meet the Bags. The Beauties and Geeks in this show are a curious species who coexist in an alternate CCTV-laden universe to compete for a pot of dollars.

Each intellectually challenged beauty is paired with a gormless geek to complete weekly tasks that play to each other's strengths and weaknesses. One couple is turfed out of the house each week; one duo wins at the end.

Sounds simple enough. But if the assembled Bags were on an Everest climb to improvement they would be at least five weeks away from base...

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Ever since Changing Rooms offered neighbours the chance to assault each other's houses with the help of gaudy interior designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, there has been a seemingly limitless demand for property-related reality shows. Our TV schedules are congested with copycat programmes on everything connected to the humble home. If property was really that exciting we'd all be estate agents. So why do we love them so?

Well, voyeurism is the obvious answer. That old parental caution "don't talk to strangers" seems to be part of our national psyche in adulthood. Thus our natural curiosity for seeing...

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Every week it happens. I get lulled into a false sense of security by the mind-bogglingly simple opening round, you see. Then along comes "Information Overload". I concentrate hard on my TV screen as my senses are assaulted with conflicting aural and visual stimuli, unlike anything outside of maybe an acid trip.

Now for the test: "What colour was the ice-cream cone that appeared when the newsreader was talking?" asks the chap in the suit that's working really well with his broad shoulders and chiselled jaw.

"Red," I say, confidently, to the television.

"Red?" guesses...

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It turns out you should never judge a sitcom by its impossibly dull sit. Try not to nod off when I tell you that BBC3's Pulling is about three attractive but flawed metropolitan women who live together and make bad romantic decisions. That'll be Friends without men, then. Or a Sex and the City-inspired, aspirational romp. Roll on the unreasonably muscular conquests, sex talk and shoes that cost more than most people's houses.

Or not.

In fact there are plagues more appealing than the lifestyle and personalities touted by the daringly rank Pulling. There's no diddling...

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Anyone remember The Great Egg Race? A quaint, scientific challenge-based show from the early 1980s, it required its contestants to solve such delicate problems as taking a photograph of an oil rig from a fluttering kite.

But that kind of thing looks distinctly unimpressive in 21st-century television schedules. The ante has to be upped to include steel girders, welding and combustible materials - and Scrapheap Challenge does exactly this, with panache, gusto and the occasional explosion. It's now in its umpteenth series, presented by actor Robert Llewellyn (best known for playing the mechanoid Kryten in...

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The schedules are liberally sprinkled with backward glances and paeans to the past, but when it comes to yester-vision, ITV4 is in a league of its own. Take a wander through its retrocentric realm (6:00 to 9:00pm daily tend to be the happy hours) and you'll find exotic riches, heady flavours and a language not spoken anywhere else.

But what precisely will you find on ITV4? What can possibly tempt you away from all that is street and happening and now?

Squealing tyres

Why bother with homage, in Ashes on Mars, or whatever, when you can have...

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I think there's always a point in the life of sitcoms when the creators are faced with a choice. It's the point where a show moves from just being a successful series into franchise territory. They can then go down two paths; either forsake most of the show's laughs in favour of giving the characters storylines offering more longevity like Friends. The second option is to try to ignore the onset of sitcom middle age and keep the status quo, risking staleness as a result.

Remarkably, the creators of Scrubs have straddled both paths and let...

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Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner used to write for The Sopranos, a show about male vanity, pride and rage. Mafiosi were the ideal metaphor, graphically showcasing men's destructive impulses. Mad Men has no guns, strippers or heaps of rigatoni, but its heart is just as black. It's set in a 1960s advertising agency - another macho hierarchy dedicated to doing something immoral, if not in this case actually illegal. Peeking into the brainstorming rooms of super-smart Madison Avenue is the hook, but the real point of Mad Men is to dissect the stunted male mind.

Those times when...

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I suppose it makes sense that comedians can sometimes find themselves on the edge of madness. Spike Milligan was a famous case in point. Maybe it's the pressure they put themselves under to succeed that causes a breakdown.

In the case of Paul Merton, long-standing team captain on the BBC1 comedy Have I Got News for You, it was shortly before he became a household name. Back in 1990 he suffered a mental breakdown (said to be caused by overwork, overexcitement at getting where he'd wanted to be all along, all aggravated by anti-malarial pills) and booked...

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Michael Kitchen has two facial expressions: one is a comedy impression of Prince Charles, the second looks like he's found an ulcer on his gum. He says his laconic catchphrase - "My name is Christopher Foyle and I'm a policeman" - in the strangulated fashion of someone with heartburn, and his minimalist movements suggest he fears knocking his trilby off on the doorframe of his Wolseley police car. He doesn't so much speak his lines as squeeze them out through gritted teeth.

Contrasting with the angst of Kitchen is the bumptious eagerness of Honeysuckle Weeks as driver Sam...

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At first glance, Waking the Dead looks like a greatest hits compilation of detective shows, a kind of Now That's What I Call a Crime Drama. There's the Cracker-esque psychology, forensics that are a scalpel-cut away from Silent Witness, the door-to-door policing of Prime Suspect and the same light bulb budget as CSI.

But Waking the Dead has carved out its own niche in the harrowing gloomiverse that is the two-part psychological thriller. It's mainly down to head detective Peter Boyd (Trevor Eve), who, despite looking like Noel Edmonds's thuggish older brother, has a temper that would...

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