It's the holy grail of comedy. The mainstream family sitcom. So full marks to ITV1 – not a channel with a great track record in the genre lately – for having a crack. Whether they've totally succeeded is another matter though.

We all love comedians chatting off-duty, that’s why Jerry Seinfield’s Comedians In Cars series and Alan Davies As Yet Untitled do so well. and now BBC Three has got in on the act with the low-budget, lo-fi but big-on-laughs Romesh: Comedians In Pubs Talking Comedy. 

BBC Two has commissioned three new episodes of Jack Dee's HelpDesk. 

Jack Dee’s Referendum HelpDesk will air on BBC Two in the weeks leading up to the EU Referendum on 23rd June. It will see the comedian help a live studio audience with their problems and shed light on dilemmas and issues relating to the vote.

In each episode Jack will be accompanied by a panel of four special comedic guests. Nothing is written or prepared and the panel don't know what the questions from the audience will be until the show begins.

When I first saw Jack Dee’s Help Desk onstage in Edinburgh last summer I wrote that this comedy agony uncle format was clearly a TV show-in-waiting. The surprising thing is that the BBC is trying it out for the first time with an election theme. Compare this to C4, which has given an election theme to a tried and tested vehicle, The Last Leg. Though, of course, that too started out as a specialist show covering the Paralympics, so maybe there is a weird logic here and if Dee's format works it will return.