Richard Curtis

Though Free Agents is a droll and very winning romantic comedy, don't expect soft-focus hearts and flowers. Yes, it's sweet and poignant, but it's also frequently filthy - imagine Richard Curtis doing dirty. The pairing of Stephen Mangan and Sharon Horgan as its emotionally stunted leads - talent agents Alex and Helen - is an inspired one. He's sad and embittered after a messy divorce and misses his children; she binge-drinks to blot out her obsession with her dead fiancee. They have a disastrous date where he cries after sex, then face the crippling embarrassment of having to work together, day in, day out. This possibly sounds gruesome, but it's not; Free Agents (you might recall its 2007 pilot) is a deliciously skewed romance that's adult, modern and funny. And Mangan and Horgan are appealing as two lost and damaged souls in search of happiness.

Fortune vomits on my eiderdown yet again

News that Blackadder will return to our screens this Christmas with a new documentary has produced a level of national salivation absent from pop culture since George Lucas stamped on the dreams of Star Wars fans.

Actually, love isn't always quite enough

The film's form has been compared with Robert Altman's multi-story movies like Short Cuts but what it more closely resembles is the slick Terence Rattigan movie The VIPs which links the fates of various well-heeled types in an exclusive lounge at London airport. Love Actually nods to Rattigan's portmanteau film by beginning and ending with characters reuniting and embracing at Heathrow.

Love Actually

You can almost see Curtis pressing the emotional buttons, but he does it so well you won't care. Warm, bittersweet and hilarious, this is lovely, actually. Prepare to be smitten.

Love Actually

There are laughs laced with feeling here, but the deft screenwriter Richard Curtis (Four Weddings And A Funeral, Notting Hill) dilutes the impact by tossing in more and more stories.

Thankfully, they more or less pulled it off; but it's doubtful whether it could - and should - happen again. For Curtis and Elton seem almost too preoccupied, or lazy, or indifferent, to sustain any kind of rekindled comic genius for a whole new series of Blackadder anymore - you sense that half an hour is more or less the limit.

That apart - and it did no more than slow what had been an incredible pace - this was flawless, deceptively clever, feel-good television from start to finish. In its machine-gun delivery of funny lines and strong sight gags; its artless contrivance of a charmingly quaint small town English world; and, above all, its reliance upon ensemble acting of the very highest quality from a large cast of gifted comic actors, the Vicar of Dibley strongly raises the memory of Dad's Army. And compliments come no more lavish than that.

Meanwhile The Vicar Of Dibley (BBC1) was holding a service for animals, which offered Richard Curtis ample scope for his favourite big job jokes. The series has been, like the vicar, bumpy in bits but, on the whole, fresh and funny. And it's extremely decent of me to say so as one of Curtis's big job jokes has put me off Twiglets completely. A serious matter at Christmas when I am offered nothing else.

This even makes panto seem deep

In a recent interview, Curtis attributed the success of Four Weddings and a Funeral to the 14 rewrites he'd given the script. Unfortunately, he apparently couldn't find time to give this series even one and, if it weren't for a fine cast with some strong character actors (Liz Smith and John Bluthal could bolster up even the telephone directory), the programme would simply disintegrate.

In The Vicar Of Dibley (BBC1) the parish invited Elton John to open their fair but found they had got Reg Dwight, a musician fated to see people's faces fall ("The blues is what I sing."). Anyway this blonde turned up and everyone seemed delighted. Apparently it was Kylie Minogue. Well, I didn't know. I saw Elton John in the street once wearing pink striped pyjamas. You know where you are with Elton.