Charlie Brooker

As I mentioned last week, I was genuinely excited when BBC1 began running trailers for this latest series, which must be as sure a sign of encroaching age as a grey pubic hair or an inexplicable urge to place a doily beneath every object in the house. Quite why I enjoy the programme is a mystery - perhaps my hate receptors are at their lowest ebb on a Sunday evening.

Finally, a quick but enthusiastic nod in the direction of The Office (BBC2) - it might be another spoof documentary series, but it's a spoof documentary series distinguished by superb performances and regular belly-laughs, and is not to be missed.

It's a con trick really - Banzai feels fresh and different, despite the fact that it's actually a compendium of the kind of self-consciously off-beat comedy stunts Chris Evans used to pull on TFI Friday week after week ('How many hotdogs can Anna Friel poke down her cleavage?' - that kind of thing), but given a late-night adult twist (i.e. it contains penises).

Elsewhere, on the evidence of episode one alone, it's hard to know what to make of Happiness (BBC2), Paul Whitehouse's midlife-crisis comedy-drama. There's precious little happiness, and only brief smatterings of (genuinely funny) comedy in it, but there is plenty of angst.

Many, many things go clean over my head. But Jim Davidson's Generation Game (BBC1) is the first thing that's ever gone under it. As a child, I watched Larry Grayson's tenure, and found the programme dull but easy to follow. Now it's transformed into something I simply don't understand.

Attention, Scum seems to have a budget capable of sustaining a small collection of lo-fi running gags and little else: as a result there's too much enforced repetition - leaving each half-hour edition feeling more like three 10-minute broadcasts crammed together.

Also this week: Cold Feet (ITV1), which is whipping past at a bewildering rate, like a soap opera viewed from the side of a fairground ride. Worth watching to see how many additional storylines they can plough into before the whole thing collapses beneath the weight of its own angst.

His new C5 vehicle The Jerry Atrick Show is an endearingly shambolic attempt to showcase his talents. An uneasy mix of card tricks, gleefully puerile sketches, and stonefaced four-letter misanthropy, it's like an edition of the Paul Daniels Magic Show fronted by Howard Beale, the suicidal newsreader from the movie Network.

Finally, an order: watch Black Books, because it's funny. Sitting alone in a room, watching a blurry nth-generation copy of this week's opening episode on tape, I was shocked to hear myself laughing out loud twice within the first five minutes.

Once the shouting dies down (or your rising tinnitus drowns it out) it's easier to concentrate on the programme itself, which seems to have borrowed the premise from Butterflies: Dad's a dentist, Mum can't cook, and their teenage son's a half-witted layabout.