Although Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze loudly informs us that it's now 1966, nothing much has changed in the Welsh village of Trefelin over the past three years. The villagers have generally accepted Prem Sharma (Sanjeev Bhaskar) as their local GP, although his clever, sophisticated wife Kamini (Ayesha Dharker) is still pushing him to expand both his practice and his horizons.

Her hopes are dashed when Robert and Basil Thomas, the flashy sons of the former mine-owner, return, throwing money around and announcing their plan to build a new town where the houses will have... wait for it, central heating and constant hot water. Imagine!

This gentle character-led period drama (think Heartbeat in Wales, with medicine instead of policework) was rightly garlanded with awards for its first series. Its third series is just as polished and charming.

Sanjeev Bhaskar: Daytime viewers deserve decent TV too

Daytime television is generally regarded as cheap, schedule-filling fodder for housewives and the retired, but with the schedules facing cuts, actor Sanjeev Bhaskar has spoken up in its defence.

In this week's episode of The Reunion - the first in a new series - monstrous egos were nowhere to be found and tone was, for much of the time, joyful. Presenter Sue MacGregor, best known for calmly making mincemeat of politicians on The Today Programme for nearly 20 years, reunited the brains behind the BBC comedy Goodness Gracious Me, which first aired on Radio 4 in 1996 and later transferred to television. There were no histrionics here, just pride in a series that helped break the largely white, xenophobic mould of mainstream comedy.

Goodness Gracious Me - named in "tribute" to the Peter Sellers-Sophia Lore song inspired by their 1960 film The Millionairess - was the first series in the history of the BBC that was conceived, written and performed entirely by British-Asians. In examining the tensions between traditional Asian ways and modern British life, it yielded a host of celebrated sketches including "Going for an English", in which the cast get tanked up on lassis and order 12 bread rolls and a pint of ketchup, and "The Six Million Rupee Man", a daft re-working of The Six Million Dollar Man.

Here the show's major players, including Sanjeev Bhaskar, Meera Syal and producer Anil Gupta, discussed their early days as the toast of British comedy like people who couldn't believe their luck. "There was a general feeling amongst British Asians that they were finding their identity, and we were part of that," noted Bhaskar, who had, until the show's early success, been working in marketing.

But there was a discernible sadness too, in the fact that the door they had opened for the next generation of Asian performers seemed to slam shut after them. After three series, Good Gracious Me was cancelled and, soon after, the BBC and its rivals seem to forget the non-white audience. "We used to play the spot the-Asian-on-the-telly game when I was a kid and I find that I'm doing that again," sighed Syal.

If the irony of making this point on Radio 4 - the station that first championed them and yet remains dominated by white, middle-class presenters - had occurred to Syal, she was too polite to mention it.

Could the prolific John Lloyd be about to come up with yet another long-running programme idea? His one-off celebration The Meaning of Liff at 30, in the company of Sanjeev Bhaskar, Terry Jones and Helen Fielding, was such good fun you felt it was a panel game waiting to happen.

The simple premise of The Meaning of Liff, the bestseller Lloyd wrote with Douglas Adams in the 1980s, was to impose silly meanings on British place names - for instance, Pontybodkin became the stance adopted by a seaside comedian that tells you the punchline is imminent, and Plymouth was to relate an amusing story to someone without realising it was they who told it to you in the first place.

For this anniversary show, Lloyd invited listeners to submit their own reinventions, some of which were every bit as witty as the originals. Helen Fielding - or "Helly", as Lloyd insisted on calling her - was especially taken with Tildonk (a village in Belgium, so not strictly within the rules of the original Liff) to define the wedge-shaped object on a supermarket conveyer belt used to separate one person's shopping from another's. How brilliant was that?

There was also Badgers Mount, describing the sexual position you knew wouldn't work despite your partner's eagerness to try it, and Norwich - any snack where the filling drops out as you take a bite.

John Lloyd marks the 30th anniversary of the book he co-wrote with the late Douglas Adams. It's a strange dictionary, as you'd expect from the inventor of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and his radio producer. In The Meaning of Liff you'll find definitions in a new dimension, as place names become definitions for experiences we recognise but don't really have a word for. It started as a game for Adams and Lloyd but Stephen Fry and Matt Lucas now tell Lloyd why they love it. Fellow devotee Professor Steven Pinker talks about the psychological relief and sense of bonding that comes from realising you're not alone in having the thoughts and feelings that Liff captures. And the studio audience throw in their own suggestions, too, to be judged, accepted or rejected by Lloyd and his distinguished judges Helen Fielding (creator of Bridget Jones), ex-Python (and Chaucer scholar) Terry Jones and actor/writer Sanjeev Bhaskar.

Sanjeev Bhaskar: It was weird marrying my 'grandmother'

After a six-year absence, The Kumars at No. 42 returns to our screens in 2013. Now, its host, Sanjeev Bhaskar, is married to Meera Syal, who plays his grandmother in the popular BBC comedy series.

Diversity in comedy - whether stand-up or sitcom - is taken for granted nowadays, but the first part of Meera Syal's Asian Comedy Story provided a reminder that racial stereotypes were a regular feature of popular mainstream entertainment only 30 or so years ago.

There are those who would argue that TV shows such as Mind Your Language and It Ain't Half Hot Mum were of their time, but Syal and her peers were left feeling that Asians were being laughed at, not laughed with.

The comedian, writer and actress may not have had anything particularly revelatory to say, but her reflections on how the British Asian comedy scene developed still made for entertaining and informative listening.

Of particular significance was the 1979 anti-racist uprising in London's Southall, which resulted in the Asian community having more of a voice, both politically and culturally. Gradually, opportunities arose for a new generation to offer their own style of multicultural satire. Indeed, Watermans Arts Centre in Brentford became something of a home for Asian comedy, as a host of artists, including Sanjeev Bhaskar and musician Nitin Sawhney, regularly performed there.

Bhaskar pointed out that the same ethos behind a lot of this comedy - to "let our politics inform our comedy, rather than our comedy inform our politics" - also inspired the sketch writing for the radio and TV versions of Goodness Gracious Me, featuring the talents of Syal, Bhaskar, Kulvinder Ghir and Nina Wadia. This old-fashioned variety show with an Asian spin was a big hit, attracting a mainstream audience who simply appreciated the project for being original and funny.

Like many television comedies past and present, Goodness Gracious Me began its journey on radio before making the move to TV. It was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1996 and, while some of the material might now seem out of date, a good deal of the writing stands the test of time.

Unfortunately, the same quality cannot be found in many of the current radio comedy shows that pop up on a weekly basis, penned by writers who seem to underestimate the skills required to create a decent sketch show.

Sanjeev Bhaskar: This week I'm...

The Goodness Gracious Me actor reveals what his week has in store.

The Indian Doctor and its cracking 1960s soundtrack

Firstly a massive and humble thank you to all those who watched series one of The Indian Doctor. With just under two million viewers and a couple of awards, it far exceeded all our expectations and the reception enabled us to get together to make series two.