Sam Wollaston

Kevin Bishop does impressions - of Jonathan Ross, Gordon Ramsey, Al Pacino, lots of people. Generally there's a twist. So Al Pacino is auditioning for Superman, on a DVD that comes free with the Daily Mail. And here's Cowell - not Simon though, his (much) less successful brother Brian. They're still impressions, though. And I'm not really seeing anything I haven't seen on Bremner, McGowan, French and Saunders even. Do we need another? Guess how Americans are portrayed. Fat and stupid. That's just lame.

MeeBOX, a comedy sketch show created by Adam Buxton, half of Adam and Joe (the first half), is a bit of a muddle.

It has a lot to do with internet video clips (I think the name MeeBOX is a nod to YouTube). There are all sorts of knowing nods to the modern world, sometimes so knowing I don't really know what they're nodding at, if you know what I'm saying.

Hit and miss, I think you'd call it - obviously, the phrase was invented to describe comedy sketch shows. BBC3 certainly doesn't seem convinced, putting it out at 11.45pm on a Sunday night.

But I do like the spoof of a TV show called 10,000 Things That Are Sooo Crap, in which 'journalists', 'comedians', a token posh bloke and a token Scot sit on sofas, or on the stairs, and talk bollocks about bollocks. They swim, that's about it, says journalist Manthea Shringleton, about fish, at number 1,245 in the list of crap things.

Commercial Breakdown With Jimmy Carr is the same as Commercial Breakdown With Rory McGrath, Commercial Breakdown With Jo Brand, Commerical Breakdown With Ruby Wax, and whoever else has done it: laughing at funny advertisements from abroad - and some from here. It may have been amusing back in the 1880s when Jasper Carrrot started it, but it's wearing a bit thin now. You can have a much more amusing 40 minutes on YouTube.

Carr tries to bring it into the modern age with some risque gags about mentally ill people, and adventurous bedroom practices, but there's no disguising the fact it's still laughing at funny foreign ads. And actually, Jimmy, call me Mary Whitehouse if you like, but I'm not sure that national television, in the form of BBC1 on a Sunday night, is the correct forum to ask your girlfriend to have anal sex with you.

Benidorm was lame, hackneyed and cliched first time round, and it doesn't seem to have gone anywhere new. It says something about the quality of the writing when the funniest thing about a show is Johnny Vegas failing to dive into the pool, again and again. I think he's trying to tell you something about the show: it's a big, wet belly flop.

His missus has left him for a man from Belgium (Belgium! Ha ha ha!) and now Adrian Edmondson has moved in with his own kids. He's bumbling through his new singledom - bumbling into things and falling over, both metaphorically and literally. We have a good giggle at the way the Chinese lodger speaks - there are misunderstandings, boom boom.

Maybe it's ironic commissioning, like the Andy Millman sitcom in Extras. If so, it's a bit too clever. And if not, then it's just not good enough, I'm afraid. Predictable groan-along sitcoms are no longer acceptable television. There is interesting new comedy out there - look at Pulling - but not on ITV, on a Friday night. Hell, I may have to go out next week.

Pulling is not just about shocking us with the filthy behaviour of a bunch of thoroughly disreputable thirtysomething women (though it is quite a lot about that, and it does it very well). It's good in many other ways, too. It's beautifully observed and written, the characters speak not in a comedy-drama way, but in the way real people speak (which, you could argue, is what a comedy-drama way should be), even on the phone. They're fabulous, these characters - larger than life, but also just like life, or lifelike. We all know - or have met - Karens, Louises, Donnas (you know who you are!). They're bad and mad, but also warm and lovely - a killer combination. They care about each other, so we care about them.

Pulling shares a lot of ground with Nighty Night - it has the cojones to go where other comedy doesn't dare, a darkness and a genuine belly-laugh funniness. It's the funniest thing on telly at the moment by a mile.

I didn't like this show last time round. I still don't like anything about it. Specifics? OK. Alice, the main character, for one. She's dreary, whiney, negative, she sucks the energy out of every episode like a leech. How's that a protagonist? She's even sucked the energy out of Tamsin Greig, who plays her and who was so wonderful in Green Wing. No wonder she can't find love - Alice that is, not Tamsin (who I don't know about, but imagine has love queuing up).

I don't like the fact that so little happens. Or how implausible the few things that do happen are. I know it's meant to be comedy, not a reflection of real life; but it helps if comedy can keep a toe in plausibility (unless it's so crazy, like Green Wing, that it's funny for that very reason). But Milly falling in love with a shadow - actually more like a projection of a man on to the side of a van that miraculously happens outside her flat every night - well, that's just stupid. And I don't like its irritating jazzy soundtrack, or how small and British it all feels (and I mean both in the worst possible way). Love Soup is insipid broth and I've had enough already.

It's totally bonkers, the product of a strange mind. It's also very funny - much, much funnier than Vivienne Vyle. Simple pastiche is not enough to get a laugh these days, you have to take it to a whole different place. And you have to be a bit mad too, which Serafinowicz clearly is.

A lot of it is not so successful - the Big Brother house full of clones that is frequently returned to, for example, is just tedious. But this is a sketch show, the format for which the phrase 'hit and miss' was invented.

Actually, I'm not convinced that there's a lot of life left in the sketch-show format. Mitchell and Webb did their best to kill it off. But Peter Serafinowicz, with his wacky take on the world, may just have raked up a few dying embers. Maybe next time he'll do something else.