Phil Hogan

I warmed to Channel 4's Fresh Meat, a timely "dramedy" from the writers of Peep Show, and starring comedian Jack Whitehall and Simon from The Inbetweeners as a pair of first-year students arriving to share a house with other nervy, blustering innocents. The early scenes were a bit forced (a problem of social awkwardness translating into dramatic awkwardness) but there was nothing a drink and a visual knob gag couldn't put right.

Does it have the makings of something more than its load-bearing parts of sex, drugs, Pot Noodle and questionable hygiene? Well, we ended on a promising romantic standoff (soundtracked by the late troubadour of bedsit angst Elliott Smith) and it was quite funny. Who would have guessed Jack Whitehall could be so brilliantly convincing as a posh, annoying prat?

The first thing to report about This is Jinsy - a sitcom set in a fictional island community - is that it's easier to laugh at than describe. I could say that I noted elements of Father Ted and Monty Python and Vic and Bob and 70s Doctor Who and Teletubbies in the show, and that nasal hair and wigs featured heavily, and that the prevailing aura of things is valve-powered, knitted from string and dressed in the blinding worst of the glam-rock years. But does that sound too unwatchable? I hope not.

The truth is I guffawed more than once at its foolishness, its exhausting invention, its inbred characters and little TV screens dotted like parking meters around moor and village issuing residents with advice and entertainment - a talent show judged by a dog ("Woof" for yes, "Enoof" for no), a Stanley Unwinesque weatherman and Harry Hill in drag revealing who's in the punishment booth this week. Blimey, there was even room for storylines - the shenanigans of the island's annual wedding lottery; the ease with which a new religion can take off from an advert for cupboards. Maybe you had to see it. Maybe you should see it.

It was funny that Matt Lucas and David Walliams's much-heralded airport-based mockumentary, Come Fly With Me, crowned a week when Heathrow was full of people not flying with anyone. But was anything else funny? The two of them are terrific mimics, and their array of characters is vast and all are well played. And it had its broad moments of hilarity - I liked the Japanese schoolgirls waiting for Martin Clunes and the security officer cupping the genitals of male passengers. But too much of the material was thin, too many of the sketches overworked and the punchlines too obvious. At this time of year one hopes for ho, ho, ho, but I came away thinking no, no, no.

There was something satisfyingly leisurely about Dirk Gently, adapted from a Douglas Adams novel about an old lady's missing cat, and starring Stephen Mangan as the one-man "holistic detective agency" hired to find it. It wasn't the smoothest of narratives. I could never wholly applaud a plot that so late in the day relied on hypnosis and time travel (the only sci-fi trace element from the original story). And, although there was laughter and invention, I'm not sure that bumping into a closed door aspires to the heights of modern comedy, even when accompanied by the ditsy loose-limbed rhythms of 1950s jazz. But it had a pleasing, meandering pace to it. You had to admire the way that Dirk's investigative method - based on "the fundamental interconnectedness of all things" - made an unlikely virtue of stringing together unlikely coincidences. And Mangan did a fine job as the eponymous oddball loafer-genius, with his boffiny corkscrew hair, love of biscuits and the rapid eye movements of a man accustomed to making a quick buck and a quicker exit; Darren Boyd was good, too, as the bewildered but biddable sidekick Macduff. As the girlfriend, Helen Baxendale was as nice as ever. It wasn't Sherlock, but I wouldn't mind seeing what a series could do.

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Peep Show was back, with poor Mark (David Mitchell) down the labour ward discovering how unreasonable women can be when they're having your baby.

"We can always give her a cervical sweep," said the doctor.

Jeremy (Robert Webb) nodded uncertainly. "Chim-chim cheree?" he offered.

It was nice to see Fry and Laurie reunited on Fry and Laurie: Reunited (Gold) even if it took a whopping 25 minutes of this 90-minute show to get them in the same room giggling over their heyday in the early 90s. But how else to make room for all the ads and biogs (for those who didn't know, Fry was a big darts fan and went to jail when he was 18) and unconscionable padding with tributes from an endless roll call of comedians including, slightly bafflingly, Daniel Ratcliffe?

But the best bit was just ahead of the big event (though it turned out quite small with a lot of recapping and Emma Thompson), each interviewed in the back of their cars on the way to the venue in a grand house, recalling their first encounter at Cambridge.

Ah, yes, said Laurie, we met at Stephen's rooms...

Yes, said Fry, it was at Hugh's...

And we had wine...

Tea and crumpets, I think...

I remember we played chess...

Hugh sang a song and played guitar...

Very funny. Or maybe you had to, um, be there.

How to describe Miranda Hart's style of comedy? Certainly, she throws everything into it - panto, slapstick, a little social satire, bad singing, malapropisms, farting. Whatever works. Of course, the biggest thing she throws into it is herself. And if she lands on her backside, well, hey - job done! The second series of Miranda started as her fans hope it means to go on, with a taxi whipping off her party dress and roaring away with it caught in the door. Magnificent.

If this had been the Carry On team, they'd have chosen saucy little Babs Windsor to be stranded in the street in her smalls. I'm not suggesting that Miranda is more of a Hattie Jacques, but oh lordy how much funnier - and she knows it - to have a woman of size lumbering up the street in bra, big pants and unattractive tights, valiantly putting art ahead of dignity.

Do women mind that men would find that such a hoot? It seems safe to assume that Miranda's constituency is vastly female, though her overarching rom-com plot - the perennial pursuit of Gary from the local gastropub - is merely a slave to Miranda's primary purpose of making a show of herself. But what a show! Listen to that live studio audience - a pit of hyenas feeding on their own laughter. More! More!

Sometimes, it was the mock-heroic way she told 'em ("I am with much news that I shall now birth!"); sometimes, a cheeky aside to the camera did the trick, or even a simple ungainly twirl. No one cares where the laughs come from, but come they must and do. Miranda's higgledy-piggledy castle of fun is built on instinct rather than theory.

The show cloaks itself in wholesome, old-fashioned japery with its broad misunderstandings ("I said ghosts, not goats!") and knowing winks at Hi-de-Hi! and Frank Spencer, and the way Miranda's mother (Patricia Hodge) flits in and out as if through a time portal to a 1950s Whitehall farce.

But there's always a sharp sensibility at work - in Hart's gleeful observations of Miranda's post-Bridget Jones victimhood, of the girly fads and shibboleths ("Fabulasmic!") of her fatuous posh friends - and if anyone is more hilariously note-perfect at being one than Sally Phillips (who is literally a scream as the hyper-amused Tilly), I'd hate to meet them. So, yes, more.

I had hopes for The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, a new US sitcom starring David Cross (the bald one in Arrested Development) as an incompetent, deluded bluffer who, to his astonishment, is mistaken for a sales genius and gets sent to open a UK office for the launch of an unpalatable Korean energy drink.

It had a promising start. The boss (Will Arnett, the unsuccessful magician and womaniser in Arrested Development) was encouragingly sociopathic; there was an amusing scene in which Todd demonstrated his grip on reality by explaining to his cat that he had to go away but would be leaving a month's supply of tuna in the washing-up bowl ("Don't eat it all at once, all right?").

But events in London felt a touch understaffed, too loosely handled, too dependent on Todd's calamities: a mishap trying to get the lid off a jar using steam, a controlled explosion involving his suitcase, an uproarious... um, sales pitch. His blag started to flag. Sharon Horgan (of Pulling fame) was fine as the molecular cook with a heart of gold, but the script neglected her comic gifts. Likewise, Blake Harrison (the tall, thick one in The Inbetweeners), as Todd's factotum, had little to do except laugh loudly at the unfolding hijinks. If only I could have joined in more often.

Rewind TV: Miranda; Todd Margaret

Miranda Hart used every trick in the comedic book in the triumphant opening episode of her new series.