Radio Times

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 (reportedly caused by working too hard, overexcitement at reaching his personal goal, exacerbated by taking anti-malarial pills) and checked himself into Maudsley psychiatric...

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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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When series four of Desperate Housewives opened with Edie alive and kicking, it was a huge relief. For at the end of series three disturbing signs of sentimentality were creeping in. Even if we could accept a soft-focus wedding for Mike and Susan, neither of whom offer many thrills dramatically, it would have been horribly awkward if we were required to cry over Edie, Wisteria Lane's villainess-in-residence.

We don't want to feel sorry for these women. We want to revel in their insecurities and vices - and we can do so because their wealth, good looks,...

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Saturday night on BBC1. Graham Norton flaps his way through another busload of inept warblers. Duncan from Blue, coathanger in mouth, "releases the balls" to confirm that, although it could be you, it never is. Episode 482,571 of Casualty. Football. A sophisticated comedy about how the massive unlikelihood of finding true love dooms intelligent people to live alone in a mad, vulgar world.

Hang on, what was that last one? That's Love Soup, lurking on the worst TV night of the week, but still the pinnacle of David Renwick's already Himalayan writing career.

One Foot in the...

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There's something splendidly reassuring about consumer investigation telly, and Watchdog in particular.

While the ping-pong style of presenting between Nicky Campell and Julia Bradbury is almost indistinguishable from that of Nick Ross and Fiona Bruce on Crimewatch, at least Watchdog doesn't give you nightmares featuring balaclava-wearing, spanner-wielding mechanics intent on bludgeoning your skull in return for your iPod.

It allows you to slumber peacefully, satisfied in the knowledge that a team of BBC researchers are amassing huge filing cabinets full of our consumer complaints, and tomorrow their intrepid reporter will march purposefully down a suburban...

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As the mother of a two-year-old, I'm extremely familiar with a wide range of children's TV. And most of it is lost on me – it's garish, fast-paced, loud and, OK, more than a little bit silly. But that's fine, because it's not meant for me. If I were two, I'd probably love it.

However, when In the Night Garden started last year it made a big impression on me. At first I was stunned, and wondered what this surreal video-art installation was doing on CBeebies. But soon I found myself actually looking forward to sitting...

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A visitor to the UK who finds himself bored senseless in a hotel room on a weekday afternoon - and let's face it, it can happen - might well turn on the TV and be confronted by Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan. He might well be unmoved by the strangely mismatched couple sitting awkwardly on a sofa. He may even, heaven forbid, think about changing channels.

But he won't have an inkling of the extraordinary affection that Richard and Judy inspire in British television viewers. The intro sequence to the current Channel 4 series shows a...

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Put simply, Cash in the Attic makes me want to go into the attic and find something of worth that I can then swap for loads of lovely cash. This is despite the fact that I don't have an attic. Or anything of worth.

So why does CITA inspire such devotion in me? I have a kitchen, but I don't get upset if I miss an episode of MasterChef. And why does CITA stand head and shoulders above the glut of other antiques shows - of which there are now so many and all so similar that...

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Crackly, 1950s archive footage of a ten-year-old girl intently writing a letter. A voiceover by a real ten-year-old: "Dear Grandma. Your breast-enhancement surgery looks beautiful. I only wish you were alive to see it. We could barely close the lid of your coffin…"

Welcome to the deeply wrong world of Wonder Showzen. This American cult hit, which pops up randomly late at night on MTV Two, is the best comedy you've never seen. Even in the States, where MTV Two also aired it in 2005-6, it only attracted 140,000 viewers – although that probably saved it from...

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They call it "the Olympics of the dog world" but Crufts is far more important than that. At 117 years old (that's 819 in dog years), it's a whole five years older than Baron de Coubertin's glorified sports day, and while it's called a sporting event, it's really more of a hybrid (never a mongrel, mind) of high-level sports event, beauty pageant and Fame Academy.

For a start, the sheer scale of it is dazzling. Try to imagine over 20,000 pooches from 182 different breeds, all in one place. That's a lot of jumping over little plastic...

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If I wanted to sue my pet, hug an inflatable lawyer or observe sexual misconduct in the workplace, I'd head to the Massachusetts offices of Crane, Poole & Schmidt, attorneys-at-law.

Boston Legal - a spin-off of The Practice - is an undervalued, merrily peculiar legal drama on Living. It's frothy, flippant and funny in ways that are difficult to illustrate without clips, or at least a finely crocheted pair of William Shatner and James Spader hand-puppets.

Shatner and Spader play lawyers Denny Crane (a trigger-happy Republican who likes to say his own name) and Alan...

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