Steve Pemberton's gorgeous new adaptation of author EF Benson's Mapp and Lucia stories is so delicious in every detail you won't be able to stop after just one episode.

Like a massive box of luxury ­chocolates you'll want to devour another one as soon as the first is over, so thank you to the BBC for ­scheduling the three episodes on consecutive nights - ending on New Year's Eve - so you don't have too long to wait.

And when that's over, you'll ­probably want to track down the Channel 4 version that was screened 30 years ago, go and buy the original books and then start badgering the BBC to make another series.

That landmark 1985 version is a tough act to follow and Pemberton - who is quite brilliant here as Lucia's gay best friend Georgie Pillson - has secured two superb actors to bring the warring queen bees of the seaside town of Tilling to life a second time.

As Miss Elizabeth Mapp, Miranda Richardson is armed with a set of slightly too large false teeth to turn her overly polite smiles into acts of pure passive aggression, while Anna Chancellor as the elegant Mrs ­Emmeline "Lucia" Lucas looks as though she has stepped straight out of the 1930s.

As she rents Miss Mapp's house for the summer, and sets out to win over the townsfolk of Tilling with her smatterings of bad Italian and limited musical accomplishments, the battle lines are drawn for an unmissable comedy of manners in this genteel war of social one-upmanship.

My highlight: Mapp and Lucia

I was worried when I heard there was to be a new TV adaptation of E.F. Benson's wonderful novels of interwar snobbery, but Miranda Richardson and Anna Chancellor are a credit to the great man.

Mapp & Lucia: Discover the delights of Rye

Follow in Miranda Richardson and Anna Chancellor's footsteps in this charming literary Sussex town.

"She always follows the latest fashions - we can only hope that one day she catches up to them ..." Miranda Richardson and Anna Chancellor are more than a match for each other as Lucia and Mapp in this delicous, acid-tongued adaptation of EF Benson's 1930s cut-throat world of garden fetes from Steve "League of Gentlemen" Pemberton.

Mapp and Lucia: Hilarious and delightfully bitchy

Miranda Richardson and Anna Chancellor are on top form in this festive three-parter as two upper-class snobs try to out-do each other by whatever means necessary.

A Steve Pemberton-scripted adaptation of EF Benson's arch novels of small-town social snobbery. Mapp And Lucia may seem to have comedy gold written all over it, but in truth this opener takes too long to get going and, for all everyone involved seems to be having fun, at moments lacks pace and zing. Things improve, however, once busybody Elizabeth Mapp (Miranda Richardson) and regal Emmeline Lucas, AKA Lucia (Anna Chancellor), begin to battle in earnest to lead Tilling society. Continues tomorrow and New Year's Eve.

The soft-centred babies-making-babies sitcom returns for a third series, with Laura and Jamie (Scarlett Alice Johnson and Sean Michael Verey) having trouble adjusting to life as a couple.

Well, Laura's having trouble and is trying to find a way of dumping her dimple-cheeked lover boy yet again.

"It's like watching someone torture a puppy. Stop messing him around," observes her waspish best friend, which is pretty much the size of it. Angus Deayton and Anna Chancellor co-star.

Radio Times review

BBC Three has always struck me as the most unlikely home for this soft-centred, blandly pleasing sitcom. It's not particularly sweary, its characters are inoffensive and it even flutters on the outskirts of twee, so it's hardly up there with Two Pints of Lager or Bad Education.

As we reach the third series young, accidental parents Jamie and Laura (Sean Michael Verey and Scarlett Alice Johnson), who conceived a baby after a misguided one-night stand, have a polite relationship for the sake of their little one.

But their parents are fractious and in chaos - Jamie's feckless dad has spent the family's money and they are evicted from their home, while Laura's high-flying mum (Anna Chancellor) is still in New York, communicating bad-temperedly via Skype with her estranged husband (Angus Deayton).

It is amazing what can be achieved in half an hour with just a great script, an excellent cast and a large wardrobe. Written by and starring Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, Inside No. 9 is a series of self-contained comedy dramas set in buildings or spaces numbered nine.

Episode one set a very high standard indeed, with an exquisitely crafted tale of jealousy, revenge, ambition, snobbery and murder centred around a country house game of sardines. With each new player discovering the hiding place, the wardrobe fills not only with bodies, but also hidden agendas, strained relationships, sinister backstories and rancid sweat (one eager participant, Smelly John, hadn't washed since he was a teenager).

No review of Shearsmith and Pemberton's work is complete without the adjectives dark and comic getting a mention, and I'm not about to break with tradition. But Inside No. 9 also offered poignancy, tension, intelligence, horror and several surprises. The lean, mean narrative didn't just twist and turn, it folded back upon itself to provide a totally unexpected, profoundly disturbing and deeply satisfying denouement. Even Smelly John's personal hygiene problem was revealed to be integral to the plot, rather than a mere comedy contrivance.

The writers also put in great performances as a bickering gay couple, supported by an impressively stellar cast that included Timothy West, Anna Chancellor, Marc Wootton and Anne Reid.