Joe Clay

Oh smeg yes. After a decade in limbo, the sci-fi comedy series returns with a new three-parter, showing on consecutive nights over the Easter weekend. All the main cast members are present and correct which means no radical rework of concept or characters - Lister is still a loveable punk-poet slob, Rimmer a pugnacious coward, the Cat vain and stupid and Kryten riddled with neuroses.

The creators have definitely pandered to the hardcore fans, so anyone hoping for any character development will be sorely disappointed. But this is a comedy not a highfalutin' drama and so long as fresh mayhem is unfolding, nothing else really matters. The plot involves the foursome returning to Earth (for reasons that can't be divulged here) where, among other things, they pay a visit to Craig Charles's real paymasters on Coronation Street. A welcome return.

An ill-advised comedy sketch show pilot that tries to spoof the unspoofable - the shock doc. When factual programmes like The Girl with Eight Limbs are already being shown, it's hard for the show's creator, Alice Lowe, whose credits include Garth Marenghi's Darkplace and E4's Beehive, to come up with anything weird enough to amuse. So sketches like The Woman Who Lived in Hair, while well executed, just aren't funny and go on too long. Not so much an opportunity missed as one that wasn't really there.

In a recent newspaper column, Charlie Brooker hinted at a Damascene conversion to compassion as he argued against looking down 'on the genuine misery of those you consider beneath you' - something of a speciality for the Brooker of old. So, as BBC Four schedules six more parts of the critic's telly-bashing series Screenwipe (TV Burp for Chris Morris fans), can we expect it to be fronted by the pop-eyed, acerbic, ranting celebricidal Brooker, or a new touchy-feely incarnation? Thankfully, it looks like being the former, as tonight he explores what effect 'Manuelgate' could have on BBC programming, and sticks the boot into the plethora of job-based shows clogging the channels.

Frankie Boyle can add the people of Norwich to the increasingly lengthy list of those whom he has offended during his guest slot on the debating panel show this week. Phill Jupitus also appears, spending most of the time in hysterics when Marcus Brigstocke invents a new word. Still very funny.

The brainchild of Adam Chase, one of the key writers on Friends, Clone is a new comedy series starring Jonathan Pryce as a brilliant scientist who unveils the result of his life's work: the first human clone, intended to be a prototype super-soldier. It soon becomes apparent that this is far from the case - the Clone (played along the lines of Tom Hanks in Big by Stuart McLoughlin) is more likely to hug someone than shoot them. There's no doubt that this is an interesting premise for a comedy, it's just a shame that it has to resort to crude gags, canned laughter and weak slapstick to get laughs. Nice riff around the smoking ban though, and Mark Gatiss is great as an odious Army colonel. Must try harder.

After a pilot last year, BBC Three has commissioned a series of the sitcom created by Dan Clark, who plays Don Danbury, a morally vacant cretin who inherits his Nana's house on the same day he is fired from his job.

The USP for this series are the narrative pauses in which Don offers instructions on what not to do in the given situation. This device creates some absurd situations that generate the odd laugh, but the whole thing is really a bit of a rip-off of Peep Show, but not as good. The character of Don looks like a drug-free Super Hans, with a personality modelled on Jeremy. But where Peep Show succeeded by making you love flawed characters doing horrible things, Don Danbury is just a git.