One of the small pleasures of Room 101.1 was that you learned a lot about the people who were submitting things. It was an interview by proxy. No more, though. The BBC have decided to turn it into a panel show. Why not, eh? Well, despite that annoyance, this is actually a pretty good start. Three likeable people, Danny Baker (who tries to put panel shows "a virus - Jeremy Kyle that's been to college" in and wears disturbingly bright white socks), Fern Britton and Robert Webb put their ideas to Frank Skinner, who is extremely good at this kind of thing. Be warned, however, the audience are extremely excitable and liable to applaud absolutely anything.

Room 101 is reducing the numeral of its network, moving from BBC2 to BBC1, while increasing the number of participants. Whereas previous hosts Nick Hancock and Paul Merton quizzed a single celebrity about their little list of things to be eliminated, new chairman Frank Skinner has a trio competing to delete. Friday's first panel is Fern Britton, Danny Baker and Robert Webb.

This is a big alteration - a chat-show becoming a panel game - and the presumable justification is a move to a more mainstream panel, although the obvious risk is that a show which had a distinctive premise and form has been made to look like several others. Rather inconveniently, Webb will have been seen 48 hours earlier on BBC1 in the now structurally similar Would I Lie To You?

He's a great stand-up and I love his sitcom, Not Going Out. So my expectations were already ridiculously high for Lee Mack's new talk show, Lee Mack's All Star Cast which made its debut on BBC 1, Friday night. I wasn't disappointed.

Despite the fact that it was all fairly shambolic and chaotic - like it had been shot and edited on a shoestring budget for Channel 5 - the strength of Lee Mack's character and his sharp Northern wit kept it entertaining and fast paced from beginning to end.

During the show guests Frank Skinner and Fern Britton were invited to guess who various audience members were supposed to look like and choose their most embarrassing stories - all very Graham Norton, though somehow much more engaging. Lee Mack was also great in his ability to take the piss out of his guests without them taking umbrage.

But without doubt the best bit of the show was the sketch which saw Mack in his bed sit trying to get Tess Daly to ditch her hubbie 'Peter Kay' and sleep with him while being serenaded by James Blunt taking off his monster hit, You're Beautiful.

It was all reminiscent of Eric Morecambe at his best (indeed there was an Eric Morecambe poster on the door of the bed sit). And Tess Daly's acting skills were a revelation. She could have found it all rather embarrassing but really went along with it.

Looking forward to the next one, though I hope they manage to sort out the editing!

Is Dawn French more beautiful than Angelina Jolie?

Dawn French, Fern Britton and Ugly Betty were ranked more beautiful than Angelina in the results of a new survey.

Jonathan Ross's old slot is taken up this week by the fourth series of this jovial comedy panel show - a safe play by the BBC, as they figure out how best to plug the gap left by Ross. It's hosted by Rob Brydon, and tonight features Fern Britton, Richard E Grant, Martin Clunes and Sanjeev Bhaskar alongside regular captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack, as the two teams attempt to fool each other into believing a series of plausible lies.

On the face of it, the formula for Would I Lie to You? is almost insultingly simple - celebs and comedians revealing daft things about themselves that may or may not be true. As formats go, it's a feather duster, an airy nothing. Yet there's no other panel game on TV that so reliably creases you up. It helps when the chemistry between the guests comes together, as it does in tonight's opener for the fourth series. When guest Martin Clunes teases Richard E Grant over the latter's not-very-plausible claim to have recorded a dance version of a Shakespeare soliloquy, it feels like old friends sharing a joke. Even when nobody really believes a given tale - such as that Fern Britton briefly worked in the Post Office or that Sanjeev Bhaskar once crashed into Michael Winner's car - the fusillades of good-natured mockery are great fun. And to add to the fun tonight, there's a little hint of aggro between Clunes and host Rob Brydon.

The best factoid in this show is that when he appeared in an episode of Inspector Morse, Martin Clunes deliberately called him "Cheese Inspector". That's not even one of the fibs in this week's show - it's just one of the inbetween bits of banter that gets chucked in for free. And the return of this series ratchets up the laughter quotient of Friday nights on the BBC (and Martin Clunes' career, come to that) by roughly four million per cent.

It makes you realise that all those years Clunes has spent stomping around ­Cornwall as the grumpy Doc Martin, pretending to be Reggie Perrin or making ­documentaries about dogs have been a waste of his talents. What he should really have been doing is spending his time larking about with his mates on comedy panel shows because I've never seen him enjoy himself as much as he does here.

It all adds up to a brilliant start to the series with team captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack conjuring perfect comebacks out of thin air. Host Rob Brydon's impromptu impersonations add an extra coat of comedy emulsion to an already ­sparkling format. Tonight's other guests, Richard E Grant and Sanjeev Bhaskar put on their best butter-wouldn't-melt faces as they swear blind that they once rear-ended Michael Winner and made a hip-hop Hamlet. And is Fern Britton really a secret Morris Dancer?

There are a lot of food-based fibs in tonight's breezy show. There's Fern Britton's tea, Lee Mack with his sausage rolls, Stephen Mangan talking about a Mini-Cooper full of sweets and American stand-up Reginald D Hunter, who claims that the D in his name stands for 'Delicious'. Personally, I think it's more likely to stand for 'Deadpan' - this guy's poker face is better than Lady Gaga's.

Also on tonight's show, Ken Livingstone says the word "anus" a lot. Honestly. Host Rob Brydon and team captain David Mitchell look suitably shocked.

Steve Jones chairs this quiz themed on the TV archives, with Fern Britton and Jason Manford captaining two teams of celebrity guests, whose calibre this week runs to Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and Pauline Quirke. Unable to decide whether it's edgily hip or comfortably staid, it includes items such as a human beatboxer rendering theme tunes, alongside a straightforward steal of the "What happened next?" bit from A Question of Sport.

Just one week after Channel 4 launched a new panel quiz about the telly, You Have Been Watching, BBC One follows suit with its own As Seen on TV. This one is chaired by the painfully unfunny Steve Jones. The outgoing This Morning presenter Fern Britton and smiley stand-up Jason Manford captain the teams. The puns and one-liners come thick and fast but sadly the (genuine) laughs are thin on the ground.