The week’s comedy on TV and radio

Monday March 26

RUSSELL HOWARD & MUM: USA ROAD TRIP:  After 2016’s adventure, Russell and Ninette Howard return to the States. And in this opening episode visit Portland in Oregon to check out the legal use of cannabis in Portland, learning how it’s grown and trying some for themselves. This is, apparently, counted as work… Comedy Central, 10pm

Thursday March 29

IN THE LONG RUN: Loosely based on Idris Elba’s childhood, this new comedy series is set amid the tower blocks and shell-suits of 1980s London. There, the settled life of Walter (Elba), his wife Agnes (Madeline Appiah) and their 13-year-old British-born son Kobna (Sammy Kamara) is turned upside-down when Walter’s charismatic, freewheeling brother (Jimmy Akingbola) crashes into their quiet lives from Sierra Leone. The series also stars Bill Bailey as Bagpipes, Walter’s mate, colleague and neighbour.  Sky One, 10pm

Friday March 30

LEE AND DEAN New comedy talents Mark O’Sullivan and Miles Chapman wrote and star in this  improvised bromantic comedy about two builders in Stevenage. It was originally commissioned for E4, but has been promoted to the terrestrial channel – a show of faith from the broadcaster, who call the show ‘ a story of cheap builds, cheap lager, bark rubbing, breakups, and bad poetry’. Channel 4, 10pm

EPISODES: This has been a long time coming. Two and half years after the last series, the  BBC is to air the fifth and final season of Episodes from tonight. Starring Matt LeBlanc and  Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig, as British comedy writers lured to Hollywood, and hating it, the fifth season was broadcast on Showtime in the US late last summer. BBC Two, 10pm

ROB BECKETT'S PLAYING FOR TIME: Pac-Man with Scarlett Moffatt sounds like one of Alan Partridge’s desperate pitches. But of course it’s real. In this new series Rob Beckett travels back in time to play classic video games with the aid of Peggy Aytean (a pun on the PEGI-18 rating system, and played by Kerry Godliman). In this episode, Rob goes back to the 1980s with Ms Moffatt. Channel 4, 11.15pm

Saturday March 31

READY OR NOT There are a host of comedy names in BBC One’s new gameshow, in which unsuspecting members of the public are suddenly ambushed into answering questions or completing challenges. Tom Allen, London Hughes and Matthew Crosby are among those springing surprises.   BBC One, 6pm.

Published: 25 Mar 2018