Victor Lewis-Smith

But there have been survivors, most notably The Onion's hilarious site in the US, and its poor British imitator at Zeppotron.com has also thrived, thanks to some short and zippy parodies of the very worst of television. However, E4's decision to transfer it to a half-hour television slot is proving unwise because every sketch on TV Go Home has been extended to a point where it far outstays its welcome.

His career was celebrated in Friday night's The Unforgettable Benny Hill (ITV1), a documentary that did much to dispel the widely-accepted image of him as a weird miserly recluse, and sleazy sexual pervert to boot.

Victor Lewis-Smith on Dr Terrible's House of Horrible

Each episode of Steve Coogan's spoof tribute to Hammer films has been sumptuously lit and shot, and the casting has invariably been spot on, yet the comedy has consistently horrified me, while the attempts to scare me have been laughable.

Victor Lewis-Smith on The Kumars at No. 42

In an era when technology is allowing presenters to make programmes at home [...] there's nothing remotely original or comical in the concept of Sanjeev Bhaskar conducting a chat show inthe annexe of his parents' house. Yet that's the thin premise of this entire series, which is otherwise simply trying to recreate the success of Mrs Merton, but getting it very badly wrong.

As with earlier series, director Peter Richardson's eye for detail combined perfectly with Cornwell and Sessions's genius for caricature, and the three developed a script that was not only surreal (which is easy) but also funny (which is much, much harder).

And I was actually grateful for his frequent incomprehensibility during BBC1's Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, because the proceedings were so utterly devoid of intelligence that his occasional moments of coherent speech simply got in the way.

Victor Lewis-Smith on The Unforgettable Kenneth Williams

What emerged was a fascinating wealth of detail, and confirmed my long-held impression of The Unforgettable Benny Hill as a man whose comic gifts ultimately thwarted his desire to become a serious actor, because he became inextricably associated with funny voices, campery, and generally "going over the top".

Victor Lewis-Smith on The Armando Iannucci Shows

His peripatetic philosophical musings were mostly of the narcissistic, self-doubting, "I don't want to be caught out saying the wrong thing" variety, and were interspersed with surreal (aka unfunny) sketches, a format that Alexei Sayle exhausted some years ago, and which Iannucci himself has already flogged to death on Radio 4.

The unremittingly grey proceedings on last night's Bedtime (BBC1) would certainly have benefited from a large injection of silliness, if only to shake the three dreary couples out of their lethargy.

Victor Lewis-Smith on Revolver

That's a pity, because although the scripts are atrocious and misguided, the idea behind Revolver is inspired. Grouping mature comedy actors [...] in a sort of "pensioners behaving badly" format has great comedic potential, and [...] should theoretically make this a must-see series. But the production has been led astray by a desire to bathe every sketch in League of Gentlemen-style darkness, a fetish for mini-cameras with wide-angle lenses, and an unfunny obsession with elderly lust for young flesh.