Preview: Murder in Successville series three

Murder in Successville is back on our screens next week, with a third series once more bringing Tom Davis back as uncompromising cop DI Sleet, alongside a whole new roster of celebrity rookie-cops to help him solve a crime. But is the third series up to the high standards set by the two before it? Our editor Paul Holmes took a sneaky peek to find out...

The week in radio: Radio 2's Comedy Showcase review

Radio 2 doesn't often make me laugh - not intentionally, anyhow - but the station certainly does its bit for the joking business. Since 2011, it's been the home of the BBC new comedy award and its Comedy Showcase, which started in 2010, has developed several shows, some of which, such as Jason Byrne's Father Figure, have gone on to success. Last week, the Showcase was due to give us five new half-hour programmes, but one - The King's Men, with Robert Webb and Terry Mynott - was pulled because of the Paris attacks. I've heard it and can't quite understand why it's been vetoed (it's set in 1909, in London), but it concerns incompetent secret service agents and, at one point, there are the distant sounds of bombs in it. Anyway, if you want to hear it, it's on iPlayer. It's good.

As are the three other sitcoms in the Showcase (one set in a golf club, one about a nice young man and his bad dad, one centred around an older woman who's not happy with her lot). I liked them all; well crafted, well acted, with the requisite level of nuttiness. But it was the final programme, The Tim Vine Chat Show, which had me laughing the most. It's not a sitcom, it's a standup show, and its energy really fizzes from the radio.

Vine rattles out gags like Tommy Cooper: so many that, even if you don't think they're all funny, the cumulative effect is hilarious. He even forces in some awful jokes when he interviews members of the audience, and gets the whole room to join in some terrible catchphrases. It's a lovely way to spend half an hour.

Radio Times review

Steven Toast is in awe of his old friend Axel Jacklin (played by the excellent Terry Mynott as a constipated-sounding James Mason), Britain's finest exponent of acting in high winds.

But if something were ever to happen to Axel, then Toast could step into his shoes, as he's Britain's second finest exponent of acting in high winds. Of course, Axel dies, hurled across the studio to his doom in a windy re-creation of Master and Commander.

There's a great set piece as Toast (Matt Berry) and his nemesis Ray Purchase (Harry Peacock) both audition to be the deceased Axel's replacement, in front of a nuclear-strength wind machine. It's an old-fashioned bit of comic idiocy, the kind of daftness Toast does so well.

Radio Times review

Overtired after an all-nighter in the studio doing "Sat Nav for the Elderly" ("Abbotsbury...Abingdon...Acton") bumptious actor/voiceover artist Steven Toast accidentally reveals on Woman's Hour the name of the murderer in Anthea Crippen's creaky old play The Moose Trap. So, after a 60-year run, attendances dwindle and Toast's chance of a West End comeback as Inspector Attenborough are torpedoed.

Maybe Toast is too insider-y for some, though it's not as full of actors' inside jokes as you might think, but when it soars, it hits the comedy sun. There's a good running gag about Breaking Bad bores, and Toast (Matt Berry) has a catastrophic encounter with Jeremy Paxman (The Mimic's Terry Mynott) when he auditions for the job of the man who shouts out the contestants' names on a "university quiz."

Terry Mynott interview

Terry Mynott on Assassins Creed Unity celebrity co-op, David Attenborough and filling in for Dumbledor.

Jack Whitehall hosts a night of comedy and variety to raise awareness of testicular cancer. It's a nice mix of old and new faces, with the first Men Behaving Badly reunion in 16 years and the return of Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse. Other appearances to look out for include ridiculously good ventriloquist Nina Conti, the weirdly wonderful sketch duo Cardinal Burns, Angelos Epithemiou's excellent study in idiocy and The Mimic's brilliant Terry Mynott. Not a bad lineup.

The melancholic comedy added a more sturdy sense of plot in its second series, with thwarted impressionist Martin (Terry Mynott) embarking on an eventful new relationship. There's still plenty of mimicry, though, for those hoping to fill the space vacated by The Trip To Italy, with Mynott showcasing his Christopher Walken, Woody Allen and David Attenborough.