Vic Reeves

Even if you don't happen to enjoy the surreal exuberance of this wacky game show, there are consolations. Principal among them is the mournful presence of Jack Dee. With a face like a doomed horse he does nothing other than pretend to look miserable. It's a classic example of "less is more" - whenever the camera focuses on his gloom, it's like an ice-pack applied to a migraine. Matt Lucas continues to give a magnificent panto performance as the drum-playing baby. But once again, the show stopper is the new regular guest Dan Skinner as a burger-bar owner. You can almost smell the rancid fat clinging to his clothes.

Lots of things we can't decide about Shooting Stars. Was it actually better than this, or did it have the same funny only fresher? Is Vic ill or just much older than he claims? Is the bullying of Ulrika just misogyny? Is anyone actually going to be converted to liking it or is it like going to one of those Jesus And Mary Chain reunion gigs, solely for the benefit of their own generation? Is there really nothing new that could have been better? Why isn't David Mitchell on it? Why are we complaining when it could have been Horne And Corden?

Shooting Stars: Bad Gags

The bad gag - and the tumbleweed that so often follows it - is an important fixture of Shooting Stars. In the video below you can watch a bad gag exclusive to the web and find out whether next week's guests Martin Freeman and Paddy Considine can do any better (I'd say they're actually worse).

Jack Dee has got what must be the easiest gig in TV at the moment. Turn up, scowl, try not to laugh. Drinks and nibbles in the green room afterwards. Car home. Thanks very much.

Meanwhile, new panelist Angelos Epithemiou is turning out to be quite a hit with his cross-eyed squint at these celebrity shenanigans. "It's all right but it's not my sort of humour," he offers tonight. You might well agree. Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer's surreal nonsense - like a hallucinogenic Morecambe and Wise - has always been an acquired taste and you either get it or you don't.

What the returning Shooting Stars lacks in novelty, it makes up for in undiminished surrealism. Tonight's guests include Ricky Wilson from the Kaiser Chiefs and Jack Dee ("Your face is like an abandoned walnut. Like a doomed horse"), but it's the enduring madness of the hosts that entertains. Within mere moments, Vic has arrested a jazz pancake and shot it with a clarinet. Even regulars Ulrika Jonsson and drumming baby George Dawes (Matt Lucas) look surprised.

Meanwhile, I am still trying to work out if the return of Vic'n'Bob's Shooting Stars (BBC2) made me smile as much as it did mostly because it was as funny as I'd hoped it would be, if not more so (and a much-needed antidote to the tediously testosterone-fuelled swaggery-smuggery of most TV panel shows), or because it reminded me of 1994, which was a favourite year of mine. No matter, as the contestants (so sweetly and naively) chanted all way back in Big Brother 1, "It's only a game show."

Shooting Stars Review

Time hasn't been kind. There's something a little tragic about Reeves and Mortimer peddling their brand of surreal comedy now they're both 50.

Shooting Stars is back! Show us the scores, George Dawes! Isn't that great news? I think so. As always with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer's surreal quiz show (Tuesday, BBC Two), I found about a third of it hilarious, another third perfectly acceptable, and the final third far too weird to comprehend for even a moment. Aside from last year's Christmas Special, the show has been away since 2002. Could it really have been so long? And how would it have aged?

Um, fine. I think. Or maybe it has just aged at the same speed as I have. Vic and Bob have become less like your weirdo neighbours and more like a pair of creepy old uncles, which suits them very well. Bob suddenly seems to bear a startling resemblance to Martin Freeman, although I suppose that might also have been the case last time around, and we just wouldn't have known. Ulrikakaka is back, and Matt Lucas, incredibly, is too. Does anybody know what has happened to Mark Lamarr? Is he OK? They've given us Jack Dee instead ("a sweaty moccasin!" said Vic), which seems perfectly respectable, and also a sort of delivery-man character comic, who might be a regular feature.

In part, I suppose, Shooting Stars was such fun because it was like meeting up with some old friends and hearing them tell all the same old jokes. Will new audiences find them funny, too? Or will they just be baffled and a little scared, like Christine Bleakley was when Vic started rubbing his thighs? Not a clue. Time will tell. I'd quite like to see them hit each other with frying pans in the next episode, though. I've missed that.

Shooting Stars Review

The lazy sense of anticipation might also explain the damp introduction of new regular guest Angelos Epithemiou, a 'burger van owner' who dripped unfunnily all over the show like rancid fat.

Stellar comeback for Shooting Stars

Vic and Bob were back on BBC2 with a bang last night as revived panel show Shooting Stars grabbed an impressive 2.7m (13.7% share) at 10pm.