Vic Reeves

Also back in front of an audience is the once-retired, always inspired Shooting Stars. After returning from a six-year break with last year's Christmas special, Vic and Bob will once more be summoning Donald Cox The Sweaty Fox as they're joined by Ulrika-ka-ka, Jack Dee and George Dawes himself, Matt Lucas, for a full new series in September. Uvavu!

Shooting Stars 'back in autumn'

Surreal comedy quiz show Shooting Stars will return to the BBC this autumn, according to its stars Vic Reeves and Matt Lucas.

Reeves, 50 - real name Jim Moir - told the Daily Express the show would return with Ulrika Jonsson and Jack Dee as team hosts.

Iranu indeed: Shooting Stars is back

Reeves and Mortimer's anarchic game show Shooting Stars is to return for a full series on BBC2 following a one-off special last Christmas.

Vic and Bob will be reunited with the team captains from the Christmas special, Ulrika Johnson and newcomer Jack Dee, for the 6 x 30-minute series. Matt Lucas is also onboard as drumming man-baby George Dawes.

The primary concept is one of baffling unreasonableness. Members of the public are encouraged to write in with their "wacky" suggestions for future inventions - basically rehashes of the "Letter Bocks" pages of Viz. If they are chosen, they then have to stand up and fill five minutes of prime-time television sparring with two professional comedians - who, additionally, have had time to prepare relevant material - in order to "win". As you would expect, it's a bloodbath - like a light entertainment Wounded Knee, but with a studio audience.

In the opening episode, Dave Gorman and Catherine Tate "challenged" four members of the public on their inventions, which included an anorak with an extra hood, for sharing with a friend, and some surrealist, sub-Vic Reeves nonsense about winning a race on stilts. As soon as Tate and Gorman started on them it was like watching two cats idly biting at frogs they'd found in the garden.

The BBC amazes me. It takes four years for Stewart Lee - a comedian with 17 years' experience - to get a six-part series; yet in Genius wholly inexperienced members of the public are expected to deliver five minutes of broadcast-quality improvised material at the drop of a hat. What, literally, is that all about?

Vic Reeves Interview

The good news for fans of Shooting Stars is that, after the excellent ratings of the one-off Christmas special, it looks likely that the BBC will be commissioning another series. Vic says he's crossing his fingers, but it's 99 per cent in the bag.

What's on the schtick? Just the same old Vic

It's not hard to work out why Vic Reeves's execrable 'comedy' panel show Does the Team Think... was given a second series (Radio 2, Saturdays, 1pm). Someone influential in the BBC labours under the false impression that Reeves appeals to that vital listening demographic, the Youth.

Jason Byrne, who follows Vic Reeves' show should have him weeping into his pillow. Not because what he does is that groundbreaking - it's just observational stand-up and sketches - but it's obvious that someone has sat down and thought about what he was going to say, memorised and rehearsed it, rather than believe that all you have to do is show up and be brilliantly funny because it's part of what you are.

You know just what you're getting with Does the Team Think..., Radio 2's quiz game - Bob Mortimer and Ulrika Jonsson are panellists, and it's all held together by host Vic Reeves's surreal whimsy, so it's basically Shooting Stars remade for the airwaves. Not that this means it's unsuccessful - its half-hour of panellists fielding unlikely questions from the studio audience passes in congenial fashion, with the fact that its participants are old friends making things very cosy (in a good way). Jonsson comes in for lots of flak from her pals - after she confessed to a horror of reading instruction manuals, Reeves chipped in: "Couldn't you get a man round to do it? And then marry him?", but she was more than equal to the task of sending herself up. Asked if she uses slaves in her house, she suggested, "My husbands?"

We were big fans of the Vic Reeves / Bob Mortimer comedy 'quiz' show and, although this revival made us laugh, it didn't make us feel the need to march on the BBC demanding that it is reinstated to the schedules.

All New Shooting Stars, a one-off special, was an object lesson in never going back. Vic and Bob seemed like their own fathers. The only recognisable celebrity was Jack Dee, who, with a blue tit balanced on his head, stood nose to nose with an opera singer giving Nessun Dorma plenty of welly. Any trembling or precipitation of the tit would indicate failure and cost him a beautiful pillowcase. To watch Dee crack into a smile was joy enough for one night.