Phil Daoust

I have no idea what Giles Wemmbley Hogg Geht Zum Fussballweltmeisterschaft Weg! means, or even whether it's spelled correctly. If it's an obscenity, blame the BBC. But it probably has something to do with football (boo!) and definitely marks the return of Giles Wemmbley Hogg (hooray!), the globetrotting ignoramus played by Marcus Brigstocke. This three-part series, written by Brigstocke and Jeremy Salsby, sees him caught up in the "excitement" of the World Cup, after booking a strolling holiday in the Schwarzwald in the foolish belief that "it'll be nice and quiet this time of year". He's never even played football before, although he was sports monitor at his public school - or, as he puts it: "I was the only one allowed to touch the master's ball bag."

During the competition, Giles finds himself caught up in a series of baffling adventures involving the Iranian squad, a stolen World Cup trophy, a very big cake and 50 sticks of Leipzig rock. To make matters worse, his fiancee, Bella, is coming out to meet him in Nuremberg to plan their wedding... with her mother.

Joy Klamp is a writer, broadcaster and prominent academic. Her latest venture was born at an unsuccessful dinner party. "I was clattering some pans in the kitchen," she recalls, "when someone said to me, 'You know, Joy, you've really got this passive aggression thing down to a fine art. You ought to share your knowledge with the world.' I didn't say anything because I'd been moodily silent all evening. But it did set me thinking that everyone deserves to experience the fulfilling empowerment of sulking and mooching and staring into the middle distance. Spoiling someone else's fun can be the most satisfying of all the controlling arts."

The result is Mastering the Universe, a six-part course in advanced "nonjoyment techniques".

The sitcom Old Harry's Game is back for a new series. Having finally rid themselves of the Professor, who used to make the afterlife unbearable with his questions and his moralising, Satan (Andy Hamilton) and his sidekick Scumspawn (Robert Duncan) find themselves facing a new challenge. There is so much sin in the world, and so much slaughter, that hell is overflowing with the freshly damned. Great fun, despite the deafeningly over-amplified laughter track.

King Street Junior (11.30am, Radio 4) has fallen to the enemy. A new series of Jim Eldridge's drama sees the school preparing for its 100th anniversary; but there is a fly in the ointment, a spanner in the works, a pain in the ar- well, maybe not. The new head teacher turns out to be a brusque, no-nonsense, stick-first-carrot-later kind of manager. Everyone naturally hates her.

One character who needs no laughter track is Giles Wemmbley Hogg, the chinless and clueless young globetrotter played by Marcus Brigstocke. (If you missed his previous outings, imagine Prince Harry with a backpack.) Giles Wemmbley Hogg Goes Off sees Budleigh Salterton's most famous son return for another six adventures; first stop is a North Sea oil rig, where Giles must overcome class prejudice, a smitten skipper and the infamous Scottish "food".

About a Dog (6.30pm, Radio 4), starring Alan Davies and Kate Ashfield, was written by Graeme Garden, based on notes left by Debbie Barham, the talented young comedy writer who died last year. Davies is the mutt Jack (I imagine he'd look like Dougal off The Magic Roundabout); Ashfield is his mistress, Sarah. Jack is as happy as a dog with two d***s until Sarah and her boyfriend decide to move in together.

Pam Ayres is back. Ayres on the Air focuses on ageing, in a selection of unfunny monologues and unfunny sketches. Luckily, for the recording, Ayres's entourage took the sensible precaution of flooding the place with laughing gas.

To the Discworld for Mort (11pm, Radio 4), a four-part adaptation of Terry Pratchett's novel. An unemployable lad is taken on as the Grim Reaper's apprentice and soon finds that ushering souls into the next world is not all it's cracked up to be. Carl Prekopp plays our boy Mort, Geoffrey Whitehead is Death and Anton Lesser narrates.

"Are you clapped out, exhausted and shagged? Are you flabby, flaked out and flatulent? Are you just too tired, fat and sad to have a life? Then watch BBC TV. Does your brain hurt? Do you want to come home and collapse and rest your weary head? Then watch BBC television. It makes no demands on the brains at all."

The spin doctors of Prentiss McCabe are back for a final series of Absolute Power (6.30pm, Radio 4), written by Mark Tavener. Things get off to a bad start when Martin McCabe (John Bird) makes the fundamental error of telling his most important client - the Beeb - the truth about itself and its audience. Can Charles Prentiss (Stephen Fry) dig him out of the hole?

The live-in lovers have finally made it to the altar; the groom is reading the wedding vows he wrote himself. We're both well past 30 now, and unless we get married we should probably split up, he says. But I'm buggered if I'm carrying all those books back down four flights of stairs... Will you be my first wife?

This cynical little scene comes from the sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Sound, a cut or three above most current radio comedy. If you're sufficiently twisted, you'll also enjoy a wicked spoof of those so-serious charity appeals, this time for Hairdressers Sans Frontières: This is Mwerere. She has to walk 15 miles every day to collect clean water... That's why I gave her this short, very manageable look.