Comedy

The commissions include programmes from established talent, including Kayvan Novak (Facejacker) and Tim Vine (Not Going Out), and a bumper crop of new faces.

BBC Three’s Comedy Slices (formerly known as Comedy Feeds) will return for a fifth year, and are designed to develop a new generation of comedy stars, both on and off screen. Many of the pilots from previous years have become hit series, including Josh and RTS award-winning People Just Do Nothing.

History

Dictators and Despots: a Timewatch Guide

Tuesday, 9pm, BBC Four

Historian David Olusoga examines 50 years of BBC documentary archives to look at the appeal of dictators, and find out how they gain power.

The Last Leg’s Adam Hills, Alex Brooker and Josh Widdicombe star alongside Tony Blair in the comedy sketch that pokes fun at the three hosts.

‘The Lift Reconciliation’ shows the three comedians bickering over their ‘host’ titles in a lift with a man reading a file of documents.

The trio are soon interrupted by the man, who is revealed to be the former prime minister, who instructs the men to put aside their differences and unite for the celebratory show.

Killing Eve is a dramatic thriller revolving around a psychopathic assassin and the woman charged with hunting her down.

Waller-Bridge, who is best known for her RTS Award-winning comedy Fleabag, spoke to the RTS about the project earlier this year.

“It’s basically a game of cat-and-mouse between two women who in a lot of ways are very opposite to each other, but who become obsessed with and by each other,” she explained.

Monday

Fearless

ITV, 9pm

Human rights lawyer Emma Banville (Helen McCrory) is known for defending lost causes. She is determined to prove the innocence of Kevin Russell, who was convicted for the murder of schoolgirl Linda Simms 14 years ago. A crime Kevin says he didn’t commit.

Action Team is a spoof spy action series following the exploits of a top-secret team of special agents working for the British government and tasked with saving the world.

Written by Tom Davis (Murder in Successville, Plebs) and James De Frond, this new comedy will star Davis alongside Jim Howick (Broadchurch), Kayode Ewumi (#HoodDocumentary) and Laura Checkley (Bridget Jones’s Baby).

“I think in the past two years, the whole conversation [about mental illness] has become saturated with the importance of talking – which I think is important, but the conversation has got to progress beyond that.”

His show, Happy Man, launched on BBC Three last week, and sees the comedian try a range of approaches to tackling depression, including cold water swimming (“one of the worst things I have ever done”), running, life modelling (“scary”) and drag.

Porters follows deluded Simon Porter, played by Ed Easton (Inside No. 9), who dreams of passing his medical exam, but he sees his way of making it as a doctor by starting at the bottom as a porter in a hospital and working his way up.

Porter joins the cynical Frankie (Susan Wokoma - Chewing Gum), a self-proclaimed 'Queen of the Porters', and naive nurse Lucy played by Claudia Jessie (Line of Duty).

Writer Dan Sefton (Delicious, The Good Karma Hospital) based Porters on his own experiences working in a hospital.

Galifianakis stars in the show which follows wannabe professional clown Chip Baskets, as he fails to make his dreams come true.

Chip’s dreams of becoming a professional clown at a Parisian clown school are crushed after he fails he fails to graduate, forcing him to return home to Bakerfield, California and become the clown-in-residence at the local rodeo.

Nor can Chip find solace in the company of his wife, who, she tells him, only married him for a green card, and doesn’t have a chance at making it as a clown – or cloon, if you’re Parisian.

The disruptive, combative political landscape created by Brexit and the election of Donald Trump is, on the face of it, a gift for UK television satirists and their venerable tradition of biting and often brutal parody.

While Theresa May’s blandness may do little to whet a satirist’s appetite, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage bring larger-than-life personas to Brexit. And Trump is, well, Trump.