Considering the awful track-record of UK TV characters given their own feature-films, I'm so relieved Steve Coogan's superlative Alan Partridge makes the transition this well. A project that's been rumoured for around a decade, it feels like the spectacular success of The Inbetweeners has made British TV production companies take the risk with a movie--knowing that even a UK-only hit will be enough to recoup low financial stakes.

Alpha Papa works because the situation is definitely something that suits cinema better than television (slightly), but it's not so grandiose that it betrays the character's small and specific pleasures. Alan Partridge has always been more verbally funny than physically hilarious, so it just makes sense to have a story set inside his radio station (North Norfolk Digital) on the eve of a corporate takeover that sparks a hostage crisis when colleague Pat (Colm Meaney) is sacked and loses his mind.

It's a predicament that puts Alan in a comfortable environment (literally "chatting for his life", as hostage negotiator and Pat's occasional cohort), but during an uncomfortable life-or-death week of craziness where he's suddenly a Very Important Person in the public mind. (I'm actually excited to see what the next Partridge product on television will be, as it would be logical for the character to get a career resurgence in the wake of Alpha Papa's events. He would at least get on Celebrity Big Brother, right?)

I'm just so relieved this film doesn't get too much wrong. The jokes and hilariously overwrought dialogue is intact, Coogan's predictably excellent (in a role he's perfected over 20-years at this point), and fans will appreciate the nods to various Partridge-universe characters and events. I especially enjoyed seeing Alan's long-suffering agent Lynn (Felicity Montagu) and "best friend" Michael (Simon Greenall) again, for the first time since 2002's I'm Alan Partridge (incredibly). Lynn gets a particularly nice sub-plot; enjoying being 'pampered' by the police, as someone with an insight into Alan.

The 10th series of the brilliantly boorish sitcom concludes. Govan welcomes a new minister (Felicity Montagu) who has two obvious drawbacks. She's English and female. She's got her work cut out with Rab (Gregor Fisher) whose Christianity has been severely tested - he's been coveting his best pal's special bottle of wine. Later tonight on BBC Two Rab faces another test. Jowly journalist John Sergeant travels to Govan to interview the veteran skiver. The pair discuss Rab's tally of triumphs and disasters backed by clips of his greatest moments.

A new four-part series with the potential to become a classic in the Little Britain mode. An all-star cast - Sheila Hancock, Mackenzie Crook, Penelope Wilton, Felicity Montagu and Kevin Eldon - star in Katherine Jakeways' comedy about stultifying small-town obscurity, where middle-aged no-hopers live lives of quiet desperation and the young leave town at the earliest opportunity.

The laughs are cruel, but the monsters of suburbia are curiously sympathetic, and the characters so well drawn and well played that this could run and run.

Come 2005, it will be 30 years since the versatile poet and comedian got her first break on Opportunity Knocks! but more recently the only TV appearance which readily comes to mind was a brief, suitably witty ditty on receiving her MBE. All the more reason then that her fans will welcome the new four-part Radio 4 sketch show Ayres on the Air, each episode tackling a subject no doubt dear to sixtysomethings' hearts. The first deals with the humiliations that come with inevitable physical deterioration and though, for example, her ode to the Wonderbra hardly creates a storm in a D-cup - many jokes are signposted way ahead - there is an endearing cosiness to the material, its delivery and pace. Both Geoffrey Whitehead and Felicity Montagu are also solid stooges off which to bounce her style of comedy.