BBC1, you're spoiling us. Following two weeks of daytime drama in Moving On, they're giving us this charming weekday comedy drama. It stars Sanjeev Bhaskar as a high-flying Delhi graduate who arrives in the UK in 1963 as part of the first wave of Indian doctors wooed by then health minister Enoch Powell. Arriving in a sleepy Welsh mining village, his glamorous wife's not too happy with the situation. And neither are the locals, including the Coal Board's slightly snooty local manager (Mark Williams), who obviously has a few skeletons in his cupboard. It's a lovely slice of nostalgia, albeit served with a big dollop of social comment.

Video: Sanjeev Bhaskar interview

Sanjeev Bhaskar explains to BBC Breakfast the irony over Enoch Powell being responsible for inviting doctors from the Commonwealth to kickstart the NHS when later in his career he was campaigning to evacuate immigrants.

Jonathan Ross's old slot is taken up this week by the fourth series of this jovial comedy panel show - a safe play by the BBC, as they figure out how best to plug the gap left by Ross. It's hosted by Rob Brydon, and tonight features Fern Britton, Richard E Grant, Martin Clunes and Sanjeev Bhaskar alongside regular captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack, as the two teams attempt to fool each other into believing a series of plausible lies.

On the face of it, the formula for Would I Lie to You? is almost insultingly simple - celebs and comedians revealing daft things about themselves that may or may not be true. As formats go, it's a feather duster, an airy nothing. Yet there's no other panel game on TV that so reliably creases you up. It helps when the chemistry between the guests comes together, as it does in tonight's opener for the fourth series. When guest Martin Clunes teases Richard E Grant over the latter's not-very-plausible claim to have recorded a dance version of a Shakespeare soliloquy, it feels like old friends sharing a joke. Even when nobody really believes a given tale - such as that Fern Britton briefly worked in the Post Office or that Sanjeev Bhaskar once crashed into Michael Winner's car - the fusillades of good-natured mockery are great fun. And to add to the fun tonight, there's a little hint of aggro between Clunes and host Rob Brydon.

The panel game it is acceptable to like returns with another amusing episode. The guests are mainly people who think that they're funnier than they are - Martin Clunes, Richard E Grant and Sanjeev Bhaskar - but nonetheless there's some amusing banter and a bit of a frost between Rob Brydon and Clunes, which is entertaining.

The best factoid in this show is that when he appeared in an episode of Inspector Morse, Martin Clunes deliberately called him "Cheese Inspector". That's not even one of the fibs in this week's show - it's just one of the inbetween bits of banter that gets chucked in for free. And the return of this series ratchets up the laughter quotient of Friday nights on the BBC (and Martin Clunes' career, come to that) by roughly four million per cent.

It makes you realise that all those years Clunes has spent stomping around ­Cornwall as the grumpy Doc Martin, pretending to be Reggie Perrin or making ­documentaries about dogs have been a waste of his talents. What he should really have been doing is spending his time larking about with his mates on comedy panel shows because I've never seen him enjoy himself as much as he does here.

It all adds up to a brilliant start to the series with team captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack conjuring perfect comebacks out of thin air. Host Rob Brydon's impromptu impersonations add an extra coat of comedy emulsion to an already ­sparkling format. Tonight's other guests, Richard E Grant and Sanjeev Bhaskar put on their best butter-wouldn't-melt faces as they swear blind that they once rear-ended Michael Winner and made a hip-hop Hamlet. And is Fern Britton really a secret Morris Dancer?

Portrait of the artist: Sanjeev Bhaskar

"I'd like to be in with a shot at playing Mr Darcy on the radio - but even there, I just get offered Asian characters"

It's 30 years since Monty Python's Life of Brian first hit the nation's cinemas, heralded by much controversy about whether it was blasphemous and consequent anxiety about who would back it. But it was both a box office success and a critical one and ever since has been voted one of the funniest films of all time. Sanjeev Bhaskar recounts how it was made and who eventually underwrote it (Beatle George Harrison). Lively interviews with Terry Jones, who directed, producer John Goldstone and all the Python team.

Thirty years after the release of the heretical masterpiece Monty Python's Life of Brian - and a few weeks since RT readers voted it the best comedy film ever - Sanjeev Bhaskar investigates how and why the Pythons did it. The movie was conceived when Eric Idle announced, for a laugh, that the follow-up to Monty Python and the Holy Grail would be called Jesus Christ - Lust for Glory. That throwaway gag ended up as a heartfelt, intelligent, rationalist satire where every scene is a quotable moment. As Terry Jones, Carol Cleveland, producer John Goldstone and others reminisce, it's a chance for fans to celebrate - and for those who dismiss the film as blasphemy to discover what it's really about.

What did 'Life of Brian' ever do for us?

Monty Python's 1979 film, 'Life of Brian', is rightly considered a comedy classic. But, thirty years on, it wouldn't be made today, argues Sanjeev Bhaskar.