Rum Bunch preview

Rum Bunch is an unashamedly old-fashioned slice of gang-show radio comedy.

10 people you almost didn't recognise in Black Books

But did you notice these people...?

Are You Being Served serves more of the same

The old show was never a critics' favourite - despite our howls about these comedy rehashes being sacrilegious grave-robbing. But it had a kind of bravery; the passing of the Sexual Offences Act 1967 decriminalising gay sex was within recent memory, and living together was still 'living in sin' in the provinces. Its knowing primness was clever - a huge wink to the fourth wall of the masses that although the outré characters seemed naughty, and Mr Humphries got into scrapes with a wide array of young men, he was never explicit about them. But the world has moved on - Kim Kardashian's bum failed to break the internet and against shows like Catastrophe, this looks more than passé.

TV preview: Are You Being Served?, BBC1

So let's face it, this does nothing new but does the old thing pretty well.

Meet the new inhabitants of Successville

To celebrate, the good folk at Tiger Aspect have let us in on a little more about this year's murder victims and the suspects, who is playing who, and exactly when you'll be able to see them... plus a set of exclusive images across this post of most of our regulars in action. You'll probably notice there's a distinct lack of Paul Kaye in this images, but more on that one soon... until then, here's a run-down of each episode!

Radio award for In And Out Of The Kitchen

Miles Jupp and Justin Edwards' Radio 4 sitcom In And Out Of The Kitchen has been honoured at the BBC Audio Drama awards.

Radio Times review

While Vicious nabbed all the publicity (much of it deploring its dated script and braying studio audience) another series about a mature gay male couple was pootling along nicely.

In and Out of the Kitchen begins its fourth radio series after a brief BBC Four outing earlier this year. Here, stereotyped bitchiness is replaced by beautifully delivered sarcasm as world-weary cookery writer Damien (Miles Jupp) is gently chided by his banker partner Anthony (the show's writer Justin Edwards). Dare one say that this is intended for a more discerning audience?

In the first episode Damien agonises over whether to accept an offer to present a downmarket TV show about street food. Comedy no longer produces people capable of sophisticated repartee? Far from it.

In and Out of the Kitchen (***), created and written by Miles Jupp, was first heard on Radio 4, a delightful spoof of celebrity chefs and our modern obsessions with food and having the perfect kitchen. Now Jupp and director Mandie Fletcher have brought it to television.

Jupp plays Damien Trench, a food writer obsessed with good nosh, who lives with his partner, Anthony (Justin Edwards), an ex-banker now looking for a job. They're chalk and cheese; Damien has a range of sharp shirts and woolly cardigans, while Anthony spends most of his time loafing around the house in his pants or pyjamas. For him food is merely a fuel, not something to be described in loving detail before every mouthful is savoured; last night Anthony was making a foul-smelling courgette soup as part of his fad diet.

The voiceover of the radio show is maintained here, with Damien doing straight-to-camera pieces as he describes a few days in what he thinks is a busy life but in fact is not; last night's biggest task was baking a simple birthday cake while avoiding his scary agent Iain (Philip Fox), who had the episode's best joke - a wonderful payoff to a running gag about "Salman Rushdie".

It's a life in which nothing ever quite works out to plan, except his delicious recipes, which are given in each programme. (Last night is was crab bisque and Victoria sponge.) The laconic Irish builder, Mr Mullaney (Brendan Dempsey), meanwhile, is working on a succession of jobs in the house with his young assistant Steven (Ade Oyefeso), while Damien's new magazine column for Waitsbury's lands him in legal difficulties. It's lo-fi comedy in which fart gags are set up but not delivered, as it were.

Part of the pleasure of listening to a radio show is in conjuring up the world described (including the never-ending building work and the awful restaurants Iain insists on taking Damien to); here we have it all done for us and I'm not sure it adds to the comedy, and it jars that Damien and Anthony's relationship seems rather tetchier here. But In and Out of the Kitchen is enjoyable enough - and the recipes are cracking.

Radio Times review

Miles Jupp's comedy In and Out of the Kitchen is an occasional pleasure on Radio 4, where it works perfectly; it's a small, quiet, irresistibly intimate bourgeois sitcom centred on writer/creator Jupp's precious food writer Damien Trench and his easy-going boyfriend Anthony (Justin Edwards).

The translation to television in this brief (three-episode) series isn't particularly comfortable, maybe because the alchemy of some shows just works better on radio.

But never mind, it's always a pleasure to meet Trench, a self-absorbed foodie snob who's appalled by supermarkets, trendy restaurants and overly familiar waiters. As we join the Trench household, Damien is agonising about baking a cake for his builders and re-adjusting his principles to write a column for a "Waitburys" magazine. "I write it, they print it, no funny business," he instructs his agent.