David Mitchell (I)

A strange one, this. Without ever quite feeling the sum of its talented parts, this satirical current affairs show has made it to a third series. Last time around, certain problems still bedevilled 10 O'Clock Live. The tone remained unsure and Lauren Laverne still felt a tad underemployed. And yet it continued to be watchable - David Mitchell proved to be a reasonably penetrating interviewer and Charlie Brooker's world-weary plaints are always good value. Plus, any show that has James Delingpole up in arms is all right by us.

This time around, it's probably make or break. 10 O'Clock Live could establish itself as an irreverent but still sentient alternative to Newsnight (we'd suggest at least one lengthier and slightly more serious news piece per show), or it could drift off towards irrelevance and self-indulgence. For what it's worth, we'd like it to work and there's no reason why it can't.

Chuckle muscles at the ready, I prepared to be simultaneously tickled and enlightened by David Mitchell's History of British Comedy.

Sadly, however, it turned out to be an all-too-familiar trawl through the early days of music hall, variety and radio, with precious little of the Mitchell magic we know and love from his prolific radio and TV output.

A catch-all documentary series such as this is only really as good as its clips and contributors, so it was disappointing to find Mitchell, or his producer, rounding up the usual suspects - Michael Grade, Barry Cryer, Ken Dodd and token academic CP Lee, all of whose reflections on comedy have been documented to death over the years.

The country must be crawling with people with a different take on early British comedy and its connection to the comedy of today, as well as people in their 70s, 80s and 90s who saw the likes of Max Miller, Sid Field, Robb Wilton and Jimmy James in their heydays. Where were they?

By far the most vivid and original recollections of early comedy came from 91-year-old Denis Norden, a living encyclopedia of British comedy and variety who merits a documentary series to himself.

David Mitchell: comparisons between Miliband & Wallace

The Labour leader's claim to resemble an unprepossessing Plasticine model seems an odd way to curry favour.

"Come on fate! This can't be right!" pleads Mark as Peep Show's merciless writers find new ways to humiliate him - this time by making Super Hans his boss. Mind you, it's never hard to make Mark (David Mitchell) feel angry and defeated. Dobby manages it just by giving him a couscous salad to take to work - or "My Tupperware box full of tasteless misery sand", as Mark prefers to think of it.

The couple's wildly different priorities are illustrated by the fact that Dobby (Isy Suttie) wants the pair of them to go inter-railing for a few months, while Mark would rather be taking evening classes for an MBA. It's another sharply written, horribly funny episode.

I think the best way to start the review of this programme is with the following statement: Peep Show is better than Father Ted.

I know that according to Channel 4's Greatest Comedy Show Father Ted's is better, but it's wrong. It's merely more popular. Peep Show's funnier because of the writing, the plot devices, the innovative camera work, the quality of the performances and the darkness of the humour and characters. Peep Show may never have attracted more than 2 million viewers for a single episode, but the quality of it stands.

Peep Show returned with its usual mix of darkness and desperation, thanks to the struggling lives of flatmates Mark and Jez (David Mitchell and Robert Webb). At the start of this series, Mark is trying to get Jez out of the flat so his love Dobby (Isy Suttie) can move in. Mark's plans are so desperate; he even thinks breaking Dobby's microwave will help. Also, Mark gets a job tip from - of all people - Super Hans (Matt King), Jez decides to undergo therapy, and the health of Mark's love rival Gerrard (Jim Howick) takes a turn for the worse.

There's so much to like in this opening episode, including Jez's somewhat paranoid display when he attends his therapy session, to the horrifying consequences which result when Mark tries to prevent Isy from seeing Gerrard. One interesting plot device which seems to be sprouting is Jeff (Neil Fitzmaurice), now living with Sophie (Olivia Colman), getting a bit too close to Mark's baby son Ian for his liking...

Part of the enduring appeal of Peep Show (Sunday, Channel 4) is that you want to believe that Mark and Jez are exaggerated versions of David Mitchell and Robert Webb, the comedy partners who play them. Actually it is written not by them but by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong (though Mitchell and Webb do provide some "additional material").

Whether or not they are like their characters perhaps doesn't matter. What is important is that those characters don't have anything in common apart from their shared flat. Mark is pessimistic, conservative and neurotic; Jez is feckless, uninhibited and shallow.

After almost 10 years, and eight series, Peep Show still feels quite subversive and edgy. The stylistic device the show pioneered - of using point-of-view shots with the thoughts of the characters audible as voice-overs - still seems fresh and it is surprising that this has been so little imitated. (There's Miranda, and that's about it.) There was a wonderfully timed moment in the first episode when Mark and Jez were having a back and forth argument which Mark ended in his head, having the last word.

To bring their story up to date: Mark is now a father, though he is not with Soph (Olivia Colman), the mother. He is trying to gets Dobby (Isy Suttie) to move in with him and get rid of Jez in the process. Jez is still unemployed and has been persuaded to see a therapist, whom Mark pays for. The humour is as black as ever, with Mark being annoyed with a rival suitor for winning sympathy by dying. My favourite line from episode one: "A squirt of Lynx: the busy man's shower."

Peep Show still feels relevant, capturing well one aspect of the aspiring but doomed middle classes. Though they are in some ways a conventional flat-sharing "odd couple", they both need each other because they like to think there is someone who is even more of a loser than they are. In many ways Jeremy is a child - a hedonistic and casually cruel one. Mark is easier to identify with. Most of us are more connected to our inner Mark than our inner Jeremy, though we would like it to be the other way around.

So much derision flows between Croydon-based flat mates Jez (Robert Webb) and Mark (David Mitchell), it's easy to forget that underneath it they need one another in a terrible, attraction-of-opposites kind of way. They're forever in a sort of losers' arm-wrestling match, competing to belittle each other into oblivion, then occasionally one will save the other from disaster. It's almost heart-warming, or as near as this marvellously bitter series gets.

Tonight, the pair are both on new career paths: Mark's book Business Secrets of the Pharaohs has found a publisher, while Jez is learning to be a life coach (a whole week's intensive training).

Naturally, Mark is scathing about Jez's new calling: "I suppose it's better than some of your job ideas, like becoming an admiral," he sneers, but by the end he may just have softened.