There's a wonderful dig at Sherlock in the opening episode of this comeback series, which sees Alan Davies making his return.

Jonathan Creek finds that he has unwittingly acquired a crime-fighting apprentice - a young man with a scarf and a talent for noticing stuff. It's hilariously done, and later Creek creator David Renwick also pokes fun at Poirot and his imitators in a scene where all the suspects are gathered together. We're also treated to a clever pastiche of an Andrew Lloyd Webber-style musical, but these aren't the only unusual features about this episode.

Ali Bastian guest stars as the leading lady in a West End show with a classic locked room mystery who is later found stabbed in her very own locked dressing room. But what's most striking in this whodunit is that, for once, we are shown exactly how the crime was committed, by whom and how it was covered up. All we have to do is wait and see how Creek will work it out for himself.

Creek's improbably lovely new wife Polly (Sarah Alexander) is still getting used to this slightly bizarre world. But when she finds a secret box of letters in the massive Tudor mansion she has just inherited, she finds out that being married to a super sleuth might come in handy too.

Steven Toast as James Bond? Why not? He's only got Michael Fassbender and Nigel Havers for competition, after all. This audition, like so many others, sees Matt Berry's titular luvvie misjudging the mood somewhat. But there are even greater problems in store when a poker game with Andrew Lloyd Webber turns nasty. With Webber's universally feared enforcer Michael Ball (played here by Michael Ball) on his tail and a gay porn voiceover to complete, Toast's on his uppers.

Still, there's always some way that things can get worse... This first series comes to an end with lots of blood and finally, a glimpse of Toast's terrible play. By and large, it's been a delight: a tour de force of virtuosic vocal and physical comedy and the kind of relentless, off-the-cuff daftness that can only be the result of meticulous planning and dedication. Encore!

David Baddiel - portrait of the artist

The comic talks about the mundanity of fame, the difficulty of doing alternative comedy when you went to Cambridge, and how Andrew Lloyd Webber keeps mistaking him for Ben Elton.

Silly ideas other sketch shows wouldn't consider, written and performed with care and expertise other sketch shows cannot match: that's this series in a nutshell.

Tonight! A time traveller goes back to 1969 to kill Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice before they can finish Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. We ask Buzz Aldrin what Neil Armstrong really said when he stepped onto the Moon. Plus, the Amish Sex Pistols.

It's all great, with Kevin Eldon's bold decision to be at the centre of everything giving it an extra bit of authored uniqueness.

Thank heaven for The Sarah Millican Television Programme (BBC2), proof that you don't have to be really horrid to be funny. Good jokes, quick wit, timing, a bunch of bawdiness, that all helps ... though speaking dead funny is obviously the main thing.

Not that it's over-cosy. "On a scale of one to 10, how creepy is [Andrew Lloyd Webber] in person?" she asks Melanie "Singy Spice" C. (Mel C unfortunately is a very dull guest and gives only asinine, on-message answers.)

I'm not sure about Sarah M's impressions - either of Nigella L or of a wolf. That's a bichon frisé isn't it? (I've just learned that one, I'm trying to get him in a lot.) Brilliant idea for a talent reality show, though Sarah - Dances with (actual) Wolves.

As for the voice, I started wondering if you slowed Millican down to about half speed (like when batteries used to run down on tape recorders), whether she would turn into Brendan Foster off the Olympics. So I did. I even learned the Garage Band programme on the computer especially, took me ages. And you know what? She doesn't. She just sounds like Sarah Millican, after a few drinks and a sex change.

If you had to decide which of Jonathan's guests tonight should be showered in glory for entertainment titanhood, much would depend on personal taste. Cheryl Cole is a fashion figurehead, proud guardian of regional accents and singer of countless hits, one of which she'll be performing tonight. Andrew Lloyd Webber is a composer of much-loved musicals, owner of six grand theatres and the perpetrator of TV casting shows like Superstar.

They both do charitable work and have carefully styled hair. Happily, Ross is the kind of chat show host who's got enough bonhomie for both Cheryl and Andrew to leave the sofa having been thoroughly coated.

Dawn French joins search for Jesus music star

Dawn French and Jason Donovan sign up as judges for Andrew Lloyd Webber's ITV show to find stars for his musical Jesus Christ Superstar.

Michael McIntyre bounds around the stage like an overexcited circus ringmaster when his roadshow reaches Belfast. He's remorselessly cheerful (a good thing in a comedian) and relentlessly good-natured as he has gentle fun with audience member Christine Bleakley about the incongruities of The One Show ("I saw Andrew Lloyd Webber talking about knife crime"). And redoubtable Olympic gold-medallist Dame Mary Peters gamely plays along when McIntyre does far from dextrous impressions of her winning sports. But really he's little more than master of ceremonies, this week introducing Jeff Green, who gets some mileage out of being newly married and his wife's love of cushions, a chipper Kerry Godliman, who wonders why baby clothes have pockets, and headliner Patrick Kielty, whose best bit is a funny Facebook version of the Middle East conflict.

Tribute is paid to a very different form of entertainment in Comedy Songs: The Pop Years. But what exactly, one of the first questions asks, is a comedy song?

"A song that makes you laugh," suggests Victoria Wood. She should know, having sung dozens in her breakthrough TV gig on consumer show, That's Life.

She's an original whose song, Let's Do It Again, is described as a mix of George Gershwin and Alan Bennett, as she celebrates "the absurdity of the mundane".

Who cannot warm to a song whose lyrics include the lines "Bend me over backwards on me Hostess trolley" and "Beat me on the bottom with a Woman's Weekly"? Eat your heart out, Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The history of comedy songs reflects the changing voice of comedy in general, from music hall songs, to Peter Kay's recent number one, as Geraldine with The Winner's Song.

Writer David Quantick traces the origins of the comedy song back to "some pillock in a jester's hat with a lute, singing about his genitals to the king, making it up as he went along".

One thing about comedy songs is that they may be irritating, but you can't stop singing them. The skiffle era gave birth to such memorable ditties as Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight? What sort of mind comes up with a lyric like that?

The birth of the singles chart in the early 1950s meant that comedy songs could make money. The Barron Knights and The Goons had hits. There were topical songs at the start of TV's That Was The Week That Was, and Benny Hill sang about Ernie, who drove the fastest milkcart in the west.

Many songs came from TV shows like The Two Ronnies, The Goodies (doing the funky gibbon) and It Ain't Half Hot Mum duo Don Estelle and Windsor Davies duetting on Whispering Grass.

Comedy songs gave hits to people who wouldn't normally expect to make the charts. Barry Cryer recalls having a number one in Finland 50 years ago with a cover version of Purple People Eater - which, on reflection, sounds like something you might find in Crooked House.