New exhibit shows archive pictures of BBC comedians

Compton Verney exhibition charts 60 years of comedy, from Hancock's Half Hour to Miranda Hart.

Ten comedians who have played Shakespeare

Including Catherine Tate, Benny Hill and Ken Dodd.

While not as laugh-a-minute as the first series of W1A, the new offering again crackled with good lines, from the pen (and now direction) of John Morton, who also tackled the monster that was the London Olympics in 2012, in a comedy of the same name. He likes a challenge.

Has he thought about the EU, and Brussels? That may be a farce too far. According to Morton's script his royal highness "needs a three-day lockdown on his loo".

As one person said in the meeting, "that's a little too much information".

The strength of this series is to mix what we assume happens within the BBC, with what actually does go on in the daft world of TV. "The Frankie Howerd room"? In the end, we don't have a clue as to where the truth lies.

If a quarter of what happens within those meetings is close to reality, it explains what we sometimes see on the screen.

It's good comedy, yes, but it does make you wonder, which we hope is the whole idea. Or is it simply a weekly video for BBC staffers to watch and reflect upon? For example, there was talk in the show of a new role as "Director of Better".

We laugh, but it might not be too far from reality either. What it does show is an organisation easily parodied for being obsessed with image. The BBC is not alone in that, but we do hope that coming up with decent programme ideas then making them is the real focus.

There was a funny storyline about Jeremy Clarkson. His surname was bleeped out, as someone was "tasked" with counting up the number of times he had said the word "tosser" in the past four years on Top Gear. Alas, the hapless "oh, cool, yeah" intern Will was given the job. If only he'd been given the task of sorting out the real-life Clarkson case.

The hour-long format did the show no favours. For example, there was a little too much from Perfect Curve, who are now genuinely the "world's most annoying PR agency". That aside, solid performances from the likes of Hugh Bonneville and Jessica Hynes have ironically made this one of the best comedy series on the BBC in recent years. One thing is sure, though, viewers will quietly desert the show before John Morton runs out of material.

After last week's episode, in which the reappearance of Steve's assistant Emma and Yolanda the photographer intensified the one-upmanship between Steve and Rob to grotesque levels, this week's instalment is a more amicable affair. Highlights include a day trip to Pompeii, which allows Coogan to do his Frankie Howerd impressions, and riffs on Gore Vidal and popular singers (Rob: "Where do you stand on Michael Bublé?" Steve: "His windpipe").

Radio Times review

At the beginning of this episode I started to think I might have had enough of comedians trading impressions in Italian beauty spots. By the end, I was completely converted again. The series always hovers on the edge of nothingy, self-indulgent banter, but it always saves itself and delivers terrific belly laughs alongside unexpected little shots of melancholy.

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are at Pompeii, wearing appalling shorts (Coogan's are those baggy, halfway-between-knee and-ankle ones) and reflecting on the disaster there. By the remains of one victim, in a display case, Rob does his "small man in a box" voice and it feels crass; but then it shades into a lovely illustration of how he struggles to take anything seriously - he's a prisoner of his own comic riffs.

That undertow of sadness only adds to the comedy, which this week covers Humphrey Bogart, Frankie Howerd and, briefly, Ken Bruce.

TV loves a tragic stand-up... but who's next?

We've had Kenneth Williams, Kenny Everett, Frankie Howerd and Steptoe & Son - now Tommy Cooper is getting the tears-of-a-clown dramatic treatment.

A three-hour compilation called Greatest Stand Up Comedians proved this to exhaustion, by butchering the stage routines of 50 famous comics.

Without the build-up, the timing and the audience rapport, most of the gags weren't even recognisable as jokes. It was like listening to five-second snatches of songs - pointless and frustrating. One of the rare moments worth a laugh came from Lily Savage: 'I've got a brother, our Archie. I hate him. The only reason I speak to him is you never know when you'll need a kidney.'

Shows like this are mostly padding, waffle from talking heads with just a taste of the real thing. That's usually because short clips can be broadcast under 'fair usage' agreements, with no fee; longer clips cost money.

So most of the three hours boiled down to different ways of saying something was funny: 'He's just an incredibly brilliant comedian'; 'Hilarious, I mean hilarious'; 'He is one of the comedy greats, no doubt.'

In case we hadn't noticed how incredibly brilliantly hilarious this all was, narrator Meera Syal kept saying, 'There's more merriment, wit and hilarity on its way,' or, 'We've giggled, tittered and guffawed our way to the end.'

But the real reason for the one-star rating is that Michael McIntyre was rated the seventh most uproarious comic ever . . . 37 places above Frankie Howerd. That's not even funny.

A studio-bound, single-set, multi-camera sitcom, Vicious is a gratifyingly old-school farce in which thespian deities Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Derek Jacobi have a char-grilled whale of a time as an incessantly bickering homosexual couple. Sealed within their sepulchral Covent Garden abode - they shriek like vampires when the curtains are accidentally opened - pompous actor Freddie (McKellen) and retired bar manager Stuart (Jacobi) tussle waspishly over decades of perceived slights, while never missing an opportunity to mock each other's supposed decrepitude.

Now, these are hardly original comic creations - the vituperative, hammy old queen has long been a staple of popular culture - and there is nothing especially notable about the premise. But that simply doesn't matter when the execution is as strong as this.

Resembling a startled, wounded guinea pig, Jacobi squeals and frets amidst a knowing flurry of camp mannerisms, while McKellen booms fresh insults in that oak-lined voice of his. He also pulls some of the funniest "Why, I've never been so insulted in my life!" expressions this side of imperial phase Frankie Howerd. It's an impeccable dual assault of seasoned comic timing.

Enjoyment is magnified by the addition of Frances de la Tour as their dotty, man-hungry pal. Famously, she starred in Rising Damp, one of ITV's few great sitcoms, and it's tempting to view her presence here as a deliberate nod to the past. Not that her involvement is merely symbolic - she's a peerless comic actress - but you could argue that she's essentially playing lonely Miss Jones 30 years on. Even the dingy brown set recalls her most celebrated role.

Broad and boisterous in the best possible sense (ie it's nothing like that avalanche of horror, Mrs Brown's Boys), Vicious is jam-packed with gags, hitting the ground running with an impressive opening episode which establishes set-up, character and backstory with consummate ease.

A co-write between acclaimed playwright Mark Ravenhill and Gary Janetti, a former executive producer on Family Guy and Will & Grace, it revels in its camp bluster with such benign relish, I doubt it'll get into too much trouble for reinforcing stereotypes. It's obvious that Freddie and Stuart are blissfully happy in their enmity, and it's that undercurrent of warmth - the spoonful of sugar beneath the barrel-load of bile - that make these characters so engaging.

I'm no soothsayer - I've never said "sooth" in my life - but I predict that Vicious will be huge. A hit sitcom! On ITV! Nurse, the smelling salts...