Kayvan Novak, Sally Phillips, Morgana Robinson and Blake Harrison take turns to spoof a series of generic dramatic set-ups (the crime scene, the politician's mea culpa, the workplace) in this promising new sketch show scripted by a team including Charlie Brooker and Ben Caudell. A quality supporting cast of 'serious' actors, including Simon Callow, Ewen Bremner and Bill Paterson, provide the essential foundation of gravitas - it's worth a look just to see a poker-faced Denis Lawson ask, 'What kind of trousers does a cunt wear?' - while someone has also taken the smart decision not to risk trying the audience's patience with catchphrases or recurring characters. The result is fresh, funny and, impressively, even springs the occasional surprise. Better still, there's more tomorrow.

Channel 4's Funny Fortnight continues with this ultra-starry two-part sketch show. A crack-team of comedians including Smack the Pony's Sally Phillips, Facejacker's Kayvan Novak and impressionist Morgana Robinson all appear, aided by cameos from Jane Asher, Simon Callow and Denis Lawson. It's a pleasure to see them at work together, even if the material doesn't always tally with their talent. Highlights include Novak as a manic Scots auctioneer and Robinson and Asher as frustrated policewomen desperate for a meaty murder to solve. Part two follows tomorrow night.

Considerably less impressive [than Toast Of London] is C4 Comedy Presents: Them From That Thing an almost entirely mirthless sketch show that wastes 
a core cast of able comic performers such as Sally Phillips and Fonejacker's Kayvan Novak on weak, strained material (some of which was apparently written by the usually reliable Charlie Brooker).

Its gimmick, such as it is, is casting straight actors such as Bill Paterson and Sean Pertwee in comic roles, but that just comes across as a desperate attempt to give it some identity. This is committee-formed comedy, lacking in 
singular vision.

Not since Ali G has Channel 4 had a truly successful chat show helmed by a fictional character. After Angelos Epithemiou's patchy showing comes the turn of Kayvan Novak, who unleashes Facejackers wheeler-dealer Terry Tibbs on a not very unsuspecting studio audience. Novak's performance is superb, but the material is desperately one-note and the song-'n'-dance finale a damp squib. The guests don't help: Mickey Rourke is at his boorish worst as the audience lap up the Neanderthal banter about 'fat Welsh bitches', while a panic-stricken Anthea Turner joins in as best she can. As with so many of these shows, it's a bit of a mess containing too many ideas and not enough thought or structure. So it's probably odds on for a full series commission.

Channel 4's Funny Fortnight continues. Terry Tibbs, the cockney car salesman played by Kayvan Novak in character-led comedies Fonejacker and Facejacker, has already popped up on Come Dine with Me and Secret Millionaire. Now Tibbs gets his own chat show in which to harangue celebrities and stir up a studio audience. Tonight's rather contrasting guests include bad-boy actor Mickey Rourke and saccharine presenter Anthea Turner.

Back on Channel 4 tonight is prankster Kayvan Novak's Facejacker (10pm).

It's another bunch of toe-curlingly brilliant sketches, including his Terry Tibbs character becoming a fantastically offensive judge in a US beauty pageant.

That, plus an excellent wind-up involving customers struggling to use a supermarket self-service till. I love the bit where the till demands proof of age from an old geezer trying to buy a tin of custard.

The show in which a man covered in blancmange harasses innocent members of the public is back. Those who prefer intelligence, subtlety or actual humour, look away now. There are three routines intercut throughout this first episode of Facejacker's new series: a sleazy car salesman judges an American beauty pageant, a sexually overactive middle-aged African woman makes aggressive advances towards two men trying to take their cabbie's exam, and an automatic checkout machine gets the prices wrong. The first is excruciatingly awkward, the second borderline racist and the third simply mindnumbing in its repetitiveness. Kayvan Novak won deserved acclaim for his role in Four Lions - but this is just Trigger Happy TV with even fewer jokes.

Kayvan Novak is back to Facejack

Kayvan Novak will be back on our screens soon.

Prankster Kayvan Novak's brand of surreal comedy is not to everyone's taste but it earned him a Bafta award for this series's first incarnation FoneJacker, and a Bafta nomination for the first series of FaceJacker. The latter returns tonight for a second series and this time Novak is taking his characters to the USA to unleash them on an unsuspecting public. Donning heavy prosthetics and adopting a wide variety of funny voices, he poses as bald geezer Terry Tibbs who takes over as a beauty pageant judge in Philadelphia. Meanwhile back in the UK, Augustine Kwembe becomes a minicab driving inspector in order to hunt for new sexual mates.

Kayvan Novak returns for a second series of dogged prankstering with Facejacker, much like his breakthrough show Fonejacker but with clammy prosthetics. Car dealer Terry Tibbs is back with a bang, travelling to the US to judge a beauty pageant in his own inimitably inappropriate style, while highly sexed minicab test examiner Augustine also returns. A sketch involving a faulty self-service check out perilously approaches Jeremy Beadle territory, but thankfully skirts around it.