Both Monty Python’s Flying Circus and W1A – shows produced by the BBC Comedy department five decades apart – featured a gag in which the BBC head of comedy is revealed to be a dour, humourless figure on the brink of clinical depression.

“Yes. And Episodes did a bit of that, as well,” laughs Shane Allen, when the long-running gag about his job is mentioned, thereby establishing that it could not apply to him. The tape of our conversation is fittingly – though, given some of his predecessors, not inevitably – punctuated with his deep laugh.

Few media moguls can count an ice-cream van as part of their empire, but Forces TV's Simon Bucks can

Comedy

W1A

Monday: BBC Two, 10pm

Award-winning comedy W1A is back!

This is the year in which the BBC’s Royal Charter is up for renewal and Head of Values Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) is tasked with seeing what they do best.

It's an exciting time as the BBC’s Head of Values Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville), formerly Olympic Head of Deliverance, is throwing open the revolving doors of the organisation in this six-part series.

The cameras will be following Fletcher and his team during and post-Charter as the attempt to decipher the BBC’s new mission statement of doing More Of Less, something Head of Output Anna Rampton (Sarah Parish) described succinctly as “putting what we do best front and centre and about identifying better ways of doing less of it more.”

Welsh comedian Griff Rhys Jones will star in the drama, alongside Angela Griffin (Waterloo Road), Matt Di Angelo (Hustle), Kimberly Nixon (Fresh Meat), Con O’Neill (Happy Valley) and Joel Fry (

W1A has enjoyed two successful series gently mocking its BBC pay­master and delighting audiences. But with govern­ment pressure on the corporation mounting, Writer/Director John Morton faces some tricky decisions as he prepares a third series.

“It will be harder to pretend that I don’t hope the BBC survives,” Morton told a packed RTS London Centre event, “W1A: the story behind the series”, at the end of January.

1. Crashing

In London sky-high rent means that young people are looking for an affordable alternative.

Crashing is a comedy from writer and actress Phoebe Waller-Bridges (Broadchurch, Bad Education, The Iron Lady).

It follows the lives of six twenty-something property guardians who live in the abandoned Great London Hospital.

The news was announced in a blog post by Nikki Carr, the channel’s Head of Marketing, as she unveiled the brand’s new visual identity.

“BBC Three's logo hasn't changed in 8 years,” wrote Carr, “so in an age of smartphones we needed a whole new system that fits the digital world, not something analogue just shoehorned into it.”

Churchill’s Secret - ITV

This one of TV film stars Harry Potter actor Michael Gambon as Winston Churchill. In 1953 Winston Churchill has the first of several strokes which was kept secret from the world. Told from the perspective of his young nurse, Churchill fights to recover, all the while holding tight to the reins of the nation, refusing to relinquish his Prime Ministership.