Mr Topaze review

Mr Topaze might not be Peter Sellers' greatest but it's not far off.

Just when you thought that every cobwebbed vault had been scoured for unseen footage of one of our greatest comedians, along comes Victor Lewis-Smith with an ingeniously assembled programme. Rare newsreel abounds but many of the best finds are cleverly animated audio recordings, with the show employing lip-readers to match silent home-movie footage of Goon Show rehearsals. Continues Wednesday with Kenneth Williams, then Thursday with Tony Hancock.

How Peter Sellers turned a pirate film into a shipwreck

The 1973 movie Ghost in the Noonday Sun, with Spike Milligan, never reached the big screen. Now its director, Peter Medak, reveals why.

John Cleese on The Goon Show

Cleese, who is currently on tour screening Holy Grail followed by career-spanning conversations with audiences, wanted to pay homage to the stylistic forefathers of Python, The Goon Show, for our Underrated series.

Stanley: A Man of Variety review

In this macabre one-man drama, Spall is marvellous as a psychiatric patient who brings to life a string of showbiz icons.

This last of the Ealing comedies is an exceptionally black specimen, with Alec Guinness as the sinister Professor Marcus, a fanged master-crook lodging at the home of sweet old Mrs Wilberforce (Katie Johnson). When his gang - including Peter Sellers's dim teddy boy and Herbert Lom's wannabe American gangster - swipe £60,000 in a raid, they decide the landlady has to go; but they are, of course, in the Ealing equivalent of the Bates motel and stand no chance against the dotty old girl. It's all vastly superior to the Coen brothers' misguided remake.

Peter Sellers takes three roles in a jolly British comedy, adapted from Leonard Wibberley's novel The Wrath of Grapes. He plays the prime minister of the tiny state of Grand Fenwick, which decides to declare war on the US as a shaky ruse to avoid bankruptcy. Sellers also plays the heroic Tully Bascombe, who leads the archaic army's 20-strong, chain-mail clad invasion force, and is quite astonishing as Queen Gloriana.

Victor Lewis-Smith to make Peter Sellers documentary

Comedian and film-maker Victor Lewis-Smith is to make a TV documentary about Peter Sellers.

New exhibit shows archive pictures of BBC comedians

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

While Gold's new scripted comedy output remains unremarkable, its archive programming continues to impress, with welcome repeats of autobiographical series Comic Roots supplemented by this second series assembling interview footage of comedy royalty. Tonight's opener allows comedic chameleon Peter Sellers to tell his own tale by way of said interview footage, permitting a peek behind the curtain at the inspirations shaping his storied career, and the insecurities entangled in his tempestuous private life.