What he watched

The Thick Of It
BBC4

This Life + 10
BBC2

Ugly Betty
C4

Celebrity Big Brother
C4

Like all the best modern shows that have eight characters speed-muttering at once, and refuse to explain any of the humorous asides or spoonfeed the viewer with details of what anyone does for a living, Armando Iannucci's excellent political satire The Thick of It never seems quite long enough. I'm always 10 minutes behind the closing credits, busy congratulating myself on having grasped a straw of its wonkish insiderness, which of course is no better than congratulating yourself on being a slow thinker.

Still, it was nice to get some acclimatisation time with this 60-minute special, though the show probably needed the extra space to bed in new characters during the enforced absence of Hugh Abbott, who had been shunted by the writers off to a wedding in Australia (pending ongoing legal proceedings against Chris Langham, who plays him). It was the funniest thing on TV over the holidays. Hugh's horse-faced mix of panic, defeat and bafflement was always going to be a hard act to follow, but deciding to replace him with two people - his Tory shadow Peter Mannion and junior minister Ben Swain - was inspired, offering a shit storm on two fronts for deranged press co-ordinator Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi). Ben seemed to ooze fresh-breath competence - he had a smart book out called It's the Everything, Stupid, he said something amusing about Australians, he dared tell Malcolm that, no, actually, he wouldn't be needing media training and, by the way, could Malcolm's psychotic sidekick Jamie perhaps get his feet off the desk? Hmm, we thought, the new boy has spirit. But could 'Benno' ('The Benjster!') be breezy, witty and fearless without turning into a gibbering doughy idiot with an uncontrollable radioactive blink the minute he tried out his personality on Jeremy Paxman? As it turned out, he couldn't, and was soon to be seen weathering the gale of Malcolm's trademark baroque invective (has anyone ever had a higher TV 'fuck' count than Capaldi?), mellowing nicely towards the end with: 'I've never seen anybody look so fucking ugly with just one head.'

Meanwhile, at Opposition HQ, Peter Mannion - Tory old-school, droll, coughing, overweight, slow to embrace the party's official new hoodie-loving sensibilities - was being squeezed by his designer PR minder Stewart and his team into a Paul Smith suit and told not to tuck his shirt in. Peter (a fine study in wary disdain from Roger Allam) wore the expression of a cartoon mule surrounded by spangled ponies dancing on their hind legs. 'I always tuck my shirt in,' he said. 'It's part of getting dressed. Should I not do my flies up either? Let the old chap flop out? Is that modern enough for you?' At one point Stewart had to switch on his warning frown. 'Are you an Ameri-can or an Ameri-can't, Peter?' In the end Peter had to grit his teeth and think of England, or at least his job.

The policy MacGuffin - flipping between the several rival camps and factions like a bar of comedy soap - was immigration, while the long-running question of the PM's departure date was put to bed to the sound of hasty new alliances being hammered together. As ever, though, this wasn't about the art of the possible but the art of talking - or its painful lack, as observed with nicely measured pathos by ambitious, tousled schoolboy adviser Ollie (Chris Addison), desperately trying to ape his tormentors, his eager voice lost in a competitive Babel of poof and arse jokes. Here nothing speaks louder than words. But what good words they are.

It's hard to believe that only a decade ago swear words were the shibboleths of cutting-edge TV drama. Now that we are safely deaf to them, they barely registered in the hotly anticipated This Life + 10. The cult series that revelled in such naughtiness back in 1996-97 (drugs and gay sex were its other gifts to Middle England) had strengths that went beyond a delight in subverting public morals. It jangled with authenticity, and spoke directly to young people who stayed up late and played loud music and shared their untidy lives with strangers in cramped conditions.

But where would its emotional grist and energy come from a decade on? What would the original five London housemates, reunited in Miles's country mansion, find to argue about?

Well, there was the question of Egg's bestselling novel, which portrayed his friends in an unflattering light, though on balance everyone seemed agreed that being interviewed by Mark Lawson in the hushed, balmy atrium of the British Library was an improvement on his last job making bacon sandwiches. Anna and Millie had issues about whether it was better for a woman to plough a lonely, childless furrow and become a clever barrister or forfeit her intellect, soul and identity to be a cooing wife and mother. Egg and Miles's strangely heated altercation about gas guzzlers and voting habits looked out of place as they 'ladded' it up elsewhere, each of them sniffing around the fanciable Clare, who was filming a documentary.

Things had moved on, but signs of maturity were as confused as you might expect for a generation famously shy of growing up. Anna's outburst at the fertility clinic - 'I just want some sperm!' - seemed less a cry from the heart as a knowing echo of the old Nineties Anna: 'You want my advice? Stick to meaningless shagging.'

Everyone was still a mess - not least Warren, who had brought enough pills to kill himself (though in the event he didn't - the third false alarm in a plot that needed the occasional emergency to disturb the ping pong of unfinished business). But what did we expect? This Life was always about mess.

It's easy to be disappointed with so-called 'event TV', and one might expect protests from diehard thirtysomething fans who invested their youthful hopes in the fortunes of these characters, only to see them grow older but no wiser, and probably not as cool. But this still bore enough of the quality hallmarks of the original, and like the original was fun while it lasted.

The premise of Channel 4's new Friday-night comedy Ugly Betty might have seemed familiar to anyone who has seen The Devil Wears Prada - bright but frumpy girl lands job at glamorous New York fashion magazine, surrounded by stick-thin assistants whose job it is to laugh her terrible clothes to death - but it was no less watchable for that. What Betty didn't know was that she had been hired on the boss's orders as PA to his son Daniel, the new editor-in-chief of Mode, whose previous secretary his father had discovered giving Daniel a blowjob under his desk. Dad needs Daniel to keep his mind on the other job. Daniel wasn't keen on Betty (not with those hobnail teeth) and went to some lengths to make life difficult for her - having her pick the cabbage out of his coleslaw, remove bubble gum from his shoes, walk his giant dog. But at last Daniel relented and she helped him save the day with an important client. Now it's him and Betty against the bad guys who want to take over.

The show is an odd hybrid of styles - sitcom gags, soap plotting, pantomime villains - but America Ferrera is a hoot as Betty Suarez, a hard-working Latina from Queens, where she lives with her sick dad, sister and young nephew, who appreciates a nice frock himself. Let's see them all again next week.

Celebrity Big Brother was back, but everyone seemed quite civilised, with the possible exception of Donny Tourette, who got told off on the first night for getting his microphone wet. He didn't care because he's a rock'n'roll hellraiser. Leo Sayer (who I had assumed would be the most unpopular because of his compulsively cheerful hair) selflessly volunteered to share the double bed with Donny, which earned him a hug from the one out of S Club 7, who looks more like a footballer's wife than Danielle, who sort of is one. 'He'll probably sleep outside anyway,' Leo said, shortly before ending up there himself.

I was starting to warm to Donny - not when he lost his bearings, the little poppet, after pissing in the shower or when Leo grassed him up for having an erection in bed, but when he gently woke up poor Ken Russell to tell him he was snoring. 'You're snoring, mate,' he said. I think Donny might be nice when he sobers up, though by the time you read this he might have drowned in his own vomit. On the other hand, he might be up with a song in his heart and making everybody scrambled eggs and smoked salmon for breakfast.

Over on the other side, Celebrity Big Brother's Big Mouth Russell Brand did a hilarious impersonation of Donny talking at Jermaine Jackson, who obviously thinks you can win this thing just by looking bewildered. It was so funny I almost stayed up all night to watch everybody sleep.

Ambridge of sighs

Archers fans must have been delighted to find their favourite show upgraded to TV (kidding!) last week when Arena (BBC4) took the cameras in to mark the show's 15,000th climactic episode, in which Ruth didn't have sex with Sam. It was an odd programme, with lingering shots of BBC offices and motorway bridges (because you can listen to the radio in a motor car these days) and bees and black-and-white footage of men in tractors. Over the top were crackly dramatic extracts ('Not foul pest, Dan...') and Stephen Fry talking about what had happened since 1951. Then an editor explained about the importance of repetition, which means you can easily follow the series even if you don't like it. They almost forgot to show us the actors, which I would have thought was the whole point. Otherwise, the whole thing might as well have been on the, er ... radio.

· Kathryn Flett is away