Jane Simon

You have to admire the way Lee Mack manages to effortlessly tuck totally random gags into an otherwise normal sitcom. His The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe joke tonight is perfect - especially because you have no idea how it managed to find its way into a conversation about weddings.

That's right, Lee's flatmate Lucy is getting married to a hunky mechanic named Pavlov who has almost as many sob stories as Lee has one-liners.

It's the last in what's been another great series.

Are Mathew Horne and James Corden the next Morecambe and Wise? On the strength of this, probably not - and the quicker Corden starts writing the next Gavin & Stacey series, the better.

What differentiates this from other sketch shows is that some parts were shot in front of a studio audience and it was directed by Kathy Burke - a comedy god. But it's the usual hit-and-miss affair of sketches that work (superheroes meeting off-duty, a camp war correspondent and a brilliant Ricky Gervais impersonation) and those that don't.

There's a surprising amount of naked flesh as the lads seem to get their kit off at the drop of a hat. The duo's popularity should help them ride this one out but as their awkward stint presenting the Brits showed, being mates is one thing - creating that effortless on-screen chemistry is a lot, lot harder than Ant and Dec make it look.

It's genuinely mystifying why this gem has been shunted off to the hinterland of ITV3, when tonight's ITV1 line-up comprises New Homes From Hell 2009, Total Emergency, Confessions (of cabin crew) and Teen Boob Jobs.

The sight of Maureen Lipman in a green swimming costume proves that, at 62, she can still give those Desperate Housewives a run for their money. I should warn you though that her language is a little salty, as that bump on the head has left her with what her friend Vera calls Pirouettes Syndrome.

Not only will LOL make you Laugh Out Loud, it's made with Lots Of Love, too.

If the runaway success of The Pub Landlord gave you the impression that Al Murray was a one-trick pony, in his new sketch show he proves he can get laughs playing people with hair, too.

Often these series shove all their best sketches into the first episode then taper off in the following weeks. The opening sketch of Murray's series about a sex-mad West Country dad, however, is probably the weakest of the lot.

Fortunately, after starting out on a bum note, things can - and do - only get better. Highlights include Murray and Jenny Eclair cast as a married couple who do voice-overs and comedian Simon Brodkin, who appears in many of the sketches, brings his own creation along to the party, footballer Jason Bents.

Elsewhere, the spirit of Benny Hill lives on in Murray's gay Nazi, while at the other end of the scale we have the PC PCs - an obvious gag that's been waiting in the wings for yonks. "We know you're in there but more importantly we know that you had a very unhappy childhood..."

So Echo Beach is no more. But it's better, cleverer, funnier half returns with producer Jonathan Pope explaining to his team of writers exactly why it was cancelled. "It was s*** and nobody watched it."

I couldn't have put it better myself - and a big part of what makes this series so good is its callous, unrose-tinted view of TV from the inside looking out.

By a series of events too ludicrous to explain, series two sees Jonathan put at the helm of a brand new drama pilot about zombies.

His writers reckon this is a terrible idea. They point out that ITV has never made a zombie drama before - even though the success of films like Shaun Of The Dead and 28 Days Later suggest the network should really think about producing more zombie shows - not less.

In any event, as the old Echo Beach signage is quickly painted over and replaced by the new logo for Renaissance, competing writers Tom and Carl look set to live through their lead characters by naming them Tim and Kyle.

But Moving Wallpaper is still absolutely the Jonathan Pope show. Thanks to writer Tony Jordan giving him all the best lines and Ben Miller's brilliantly spiky performance, Pope is one of those appalling, self-serving characters who absolutely deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as David Brent and Basil Fawlty.

His trump card tonight sees him signing up his first cast member - Kelly Brook. And to think people laughed at Jason Donovan.

Any new sitcom pairing C4 wonderkid Kevin Bishop and Chris O'Dowd from The IT Crowd has got to be worth checking out. It's set in a small radio station where the pair host an indie show (produced by Nina Sosanya from Teachers).

And what rock 'n' roll credentials this has got! It was co-written by Ian Curtis! Although obviously, and very disappointingly, not the late Joy Division singer - who wasn't exactly known for his screwball humour while he was alive.

Each week FM will feature real bands and tonight's talking guest is The Darkness's Justin Hawkins with a live performance from The Guillemots and a cameo from Marianne Faithfull.

But it'll need to crank up the gag volume in coming weeks if it's going to be a hit.

Over on MasterChef, one of their recurrent themes is how you shouldn't chuck too many different flavours on the plate. So in TV terms, you could say that Ladies Of Letters is a masterclass in how to deliver the maximum amount of enjoyment from the simplest ingredients.

Maureen Lipman and Anne Reid are consistently brilliant as waspish widows Vera and Irene, and not a single word or gesture goes to waste.

Tonight when Vera discovers that her daughter Karen is pregnant, her reaction is sublime: "It's a fine line between joyful effervescence and murderous rage," she trills happily to her pen-pal.

The subject matter - like Vera's son who is obviously gay to everyone but his mother - might be slightly predictable, but the two leads can wring more comedy out of a single furious glance than many sitcoms manage in an entire episode. First class.

If you get deja vu at the sight of Stephen Mangan sobbing in bed, you either know him very well (in which case, lucky you) or, more likely, you've seen him doing it before, in the pilot that went out in November 2007.

Mangan and Pulling star Sharon Horgan return playing talent agents who though they are technically single come with phenomenal amounts of emotional baggage. He's divorced and desperately missing his kids and her fiance has recently died.

It's not the most promising premise for a sitcom, I'll grant you. What it sounds like is the formula for a not very good Hollywood weepie: In a World Where Love Has Died... Can Two Broken Hearts Become One? etc.

Still, we'll just have to make the best of these raw ingredients and a relationship based on expediency (he has nowhere else to sleep) rather than any great spiritual or physical attraction.

The main problem I had with the pilot was that their kinky foul-mouthed boss (played by Anthony Head, enjoying himself enormously) was given so much rope they might as well have shoved a satsuma in his mouth while they were at it.

He's been reined in slightly in the re-write, but it's the watchableness of the two leads that rises above any weaknesses in the script and makes this worth a second date, with Sharon Horgan's cool cynicism nicely balancing Stephen Mangan's weepy wetness. They make a great couple - on screen anyway.

It should come as no surprise that Tim Vine once held the world record for telling the most jokes in one hour.

This show seems to be aiming for the record for squeezing the most gags into one sitcom. And on a Friday night, after your brain has clocked off for the weekend and all it wants to do is chuckle foolishly for 30 minutes, then bless its smelly old cotton socks for that.

Tonight, as two pretty lesbians move in down the corridor from Lee and Lucy, we ask can you turn a straight girl gay just by kissing her? But also, how many lesbian jokes do you know? ee Mack knows loads and loads of them and they're all here, packed in tighter than elephants in a mini.

If you're a fan of Duncan from Blue, you'll absolutely love this episode. And if you can't stand the ice-skating b*****d (as this show likes to call him) then you'll probably enjoy it even more. Talk about a win-win situation.

It's the end of the sitcom based on the unlikely premise of a bloke trying to find an impressive enough date to take to the wedding of his ex-girlfriend who's dumped him for Duncan James. It's taken him five disaster-prone weeks, but, against all the odds, tonight it looks like Rob (Daniel Mays) has finally managed to pull it off when he meets Astrid, an honest to goodness blonde goddess.

An absolutely unforgettable wedding also features a great cameo from T4 hunk Steve Jones and an all-too-brief glimpse of the very lovely and very funny Nigel Harman. Even if you've not seen the rest of the series, make a date with this one.