There's not a lot I find myself wanting to watch on BBC3 these days, but am prepared to make an exception for Family Guy, the ace up the channel's sleeve. It's been on BBC3 for a while now but has always been tucked so neatly away at the far end of the schedule that it's often all too easy to overlook it. Which is a shame as this is simply one of the funniest, smartest and dare I say it most underrated shows on TV.

This is a show so popular with its fans that when Fox attempted to cancel it in the US some years back they were inundated with protests from fans demanding its reinstatement - and the fans won. As such the programme still enjoys a hugely devoted following, and its fanbase is still growing.

Remember Lisa? Course you do. She's the one who brought in a picture of a morbidly obese woman, said it 'used to be me' then turned on the waterworks until Simon agreed to put her through. I jest of course, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't give me ideas. Lisa lost a good 18 stone and is now a dainty and pretty young thing with a great back-story and a good chance of going quite far in this show. She'll beg and plead with the X Factor judges till she gets what she wants, but when it comes to boys, she's suddenly all shy...

I was going to start this review by saying there was no point reviewing the first episode of the second series of Touch Me, I'm Karen Taylor because it was exactly the same as the last series, but then I discovered I didn't review the last series. Damn.

So, okay, you might know Karen Taylor from The Sketch Show, which starred Lee Mack, Tim Vine and that bald guy. She's (very) northern, (very) busty and, according to my husband "filthy".

Last night's Lily Allen And Friends showed us a different side of Lily. A Lily with curled hair, red lips, and a silky, strapless bright blue dress. She looked incredibly lovely, not that she normally doesn't, but she looked particularly spiffy in this episode. Louis Walsh was the first guest on last night's program, and I can't help but hate him.

He's smug, he's overly punchy - and not in the entertaining way that Simon Cowell is. While Simon is irritating and punchy, he is always witty about. But when Lily Allen made some joke about Walsh's lack of successful bands, he defensively threw out some figures on how many number one albums they've had, and then added, "Well how many number ones have YOU had?"

I don't want to jinx anything, but I have to say that Lily Allen And Friends last night didn't suck. Lily didn't read her interview questions off her cards, and she didn't use that cheesy, "Now, [enter name of guest here], my friends aren't just here in this room, they're all over the world, connected by the world wide web" line! What is going on? Has BBC Three been reading TV Scoop? But perhaps the best part of this show was that they didn't even have the animals making love feature! This week's episode was like a totally different show, and thank god, because with the way it was going, I didn't think I could hang out with Lily and her Friends one more week.

Lily Allen And Friends' second episode finally including a female guest, Adele. This episode was a bit more rehearsed than the last. However, this didn't stop Lily from constantly fixing her fringe and saying the cheesy lines that the production team think are clever such as, "My friends aren't just in this room, they're all over the world connected by the world wide web." Who talks like that? And who refers to prompts as "links"?! However, yet again, Lily's sense of humour and comedian guests helped distract from the gimmicky"OMG TEH INTERNETS!" feeling they keep pushing.

This show would be so much better if they just let Lily get on with it, and stopped showing ridiculously unfunny YouTube videos of animals "making love" and of people doing stupid things like having seagulls eat chips off their heads. The music in the show is awesome, I quite enjoy Lily's video diary and her interviews with the guests are even getting better. However, the horrible YouTube videos and awkward internet jargon needs to go.

The first episode of Lily Allen And Friends aired last night, and for those of you who watched it, I'm sure you were as pleasantly surprised as I was. While the Mail on Sunday and plenty of other blogs such as Perez Hilton reported that Lily's "friends" left the taping of the show early, calling it "limp" and "lame", after actually watching the show, I'm more than positive those claims are false. In response to the bad "reviews", Lily defended her show in a recent Myspace blog post, saying that the members of the audience who did leave early left because "we ran over a little and naturally a small number of the audience had to catch the last trains back to wherever they came from". Even despite this first episode's rawness, it's clear that this show isn't nearly as "lame" as everyone would like you to believe.

For those of us currently enjoying Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip or 30 Rock, they remind us of the glory of live comedy/ entertainment shows, which sadly we no longer seem to produce here in the UK. Well, wait no longer, as Zeppotron (a strand of Endemol) is to resuscitate the genre for BBC3 with ‘The Wall’. The title is yet to be confirmed, but it references the backdrop of a giant video wall which will be integral to the action. The show will fuse live comedy, celebrity guests and music and will introduce a large interactive focus that will invite viewers to submit jokes, upload sketches, suggest celebrity guests and much more.

Danny Cohen, controller of BBC3 has been long been searching for a show like The 11 O’Clock Show or Friday Night Live to create “faces” for the channel, adding: “The Wall is a dedicated showcase for the next generation of British comedy and entertainment talent. It feels like this kind of show has been missing from British telly in recent years.” Cohen also hopes ‘The Wall’ could earn a younger audience for the channel, while Neil Webster, executive producer for Zeppotron, was thrilled to see his company beat the likes of Hat Trick Productions and Objective Productions to secure the programme. “It’s the kind of TV you dream about being asked to make” reveals Webster. “Producing a weekly live comedy show is a unique platform for breaking new talent.”

[via Broadcast Now]

Like many people, I've come to The Mighty Boosh through the DVDs, and so am *very* excited to finally be able to sit down infront of the telly and see a brand new episode, the very first time it airs. The cultish love of The Mighty Boosh means it isn't like other current comedy shows - writer/stars Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding are more akin to the lead singer and guitarist of some uber-cool north London indie band than, say, Mitchell and Webb. As such, there's a certain buzz about the return of the show, which will air on BBC Three next month.

The second series saw Howard (Barratt) and Vince (Fielding) move out of the zoo that had been their home both on Radio 4 and the first TV series, and into a fabulous retro flat. This time they're working at the Nabootique - a second hand store run by shaman Naboo (Mike Fielding, Noel's brother) which is really a front "for his shady interplanetary Shaman business."

With 'salami slicing' cuts threatened at the BBC resulting in a net loss of 1800 posts, three unions which represent the Beeb's workers have announced that the corporation has until midday to reconsider, or they will ballot for industrial action. It seems that BBC Vision, regions and news will bear the brunt of the redundancies, should they go ahead.

But there are problems in Tellyland across the pond, too. The Writers Guild of America are currently in talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers over "residuals" - the payments a writer receives whenever his or her work is broadcast. If no settlement is reached, then the screenwriters are prepared to go on strike, meaning shows in production could be stopped in their tracks. It's thought that reality TV and hours of repeats will have to fill in the gaps while there is a lack of original work being written. [via BBC and MediaGuardian]

It was only this morning Anna was telling us about the impending job losses at the Beeb and now it seems those who don't lose their jobs might not have an office to go to anyway, as the BBC Trust has finally approved the sale of the prestigious Television Centre. You know things are bad when you have to sell the family silver to make ends meet, and with the Trust asking for a "property portfolio strategy" it looks likely there's to be more cashing in on the Beeb's architectural assets before we're done.

A complex the size of Television Centre could be worth many hundreds of millions and is clearly a juicy pear ripe for the plucking in the eyes of the cash-strapped Trust, who are obviously completely unaffected by the 50 years of television history embedded in a structure that was home to Top of the Pops, Blue Peter and hundreds of other famous BBC names. The Trust's statement, released today, also includes the chilling promise to scale back investment from areas which were "not delivering enough public value." I don't care what you say, the debate about the future of the minor digital channels ain't over yet.

It's just not been a good few months for the BBC, has it? Cookiegate and Crowngate have diverted attention for a while, but this has simply served to paper over the cavernous cracks of a much bigger problem - the fact that the licence fee has been settled at a rate below inflation. The Director General, Mark Thompson, has had some tough decisions to make, and, unsurprisingly, there are winners and losers. Well, more losers to be honest.

There are two sets of people that will be affected by the changes - the employees and the viewers. Let's start with the former. The biggest job losses are likely to come in BBC News, as news across all platforms and channels - radio, terrestrial bulletins, News 24 and the internet - will soon come from just one department. It's thought that around 500 people will lose their jobs as a result.

Before we even start talking about the fiasco at the BBC involving The Queen, I'd like to tell you about a grievance I have. The Royal hubbub at Television Centre has seen the media dubbing the incident as 'Crowngate'. The suffix of 'gate' stems from the Watergate scandal. In that case, if scandals are all tagged with 'gate', then Watergate should really have been 'Watergategate'.

Anyway, enough of that. As most of you will probably know, Peter Fincham has tidied up his desk, taken down his foam dart board and loving stroked his vast desk for one last time, as now, he's just another bloke sat at home in his pants eating pork scratchings. However, most blokes in that position aren't the former controller of the British Broadcasting Corporation. He was fired because someone re-edited Her Majesty to look like she was storming out of a room... as opposed to storming into a room. What's all the fuss about? Are more heads going to roll?

US sitcom Family Guy isn’t known for pulling any punches, like The Simpsons and South Park before it, the show’s two-dimensional characters happily mock and ridicule just about everyone and everything. Now the Quahog-based comedy and its network, Fox, have been served with a federal lawsuit for such tomfoolery, by a publishing company claiming infringement on the rights of a song they own. The ditty in question is “When You Wish Upon a Star”, a number that the publishers consider was directly copied when the animation’s lead character Peter Griffin sang “I Need a Jew” in an episode entitled “When You Wish Upon a Weinstein.”

The publisher’s attorney Paul Fakler said: "If you listen to the structure of the lyrics, the song, the name of the episode and how [Peter's] singing out the window to the stars, there's no question they were using the song," while Fox have replied: "We have not yet seen the complaint and have no comment at this time." The installment was screened on US televisions back in 2003 and defendants for the show include its creator Seth MacFarlane, the show’s composer Walter Murphy, Fuzzy Door Productions and the Cartoon Network.

[via the Hollywood Reporter]

As everyone knows, the world of media is a slime bucket. People are tossed aside in favour saving money and cutting corners. To hell with the content! Show me the ad' money! Well, the BBC is no different as, according to the National Union of Journalists, the corporation are planning to ask news staff to write a 200-word memo setting out why they should keep their jobs.

The union has reacted angrily to the move, accusing executives of "losing the plot" and asking staff to "write their own suicide note". It has written to the BBC asking for clarification after being informed the initiative was discussed at a meeting of the BBC journalism board. A source told The Guardian that everyone in BBC news would be asked to write 200 words on "why they want to keep their jobs" by mid-October. These would then be considered by a panel of managers.

Ironic really, because I always was terrified by Torchwood, but not in a good way. This time, writer PJ Hammond reckons he's doing it deliberately, and that his Series 2 episode is "going to be terrifying." I have to admit, it does sound pretty scary. He's borrowed an idea from an episode of his 80s creation Sapphire and Steel, where the character of Mr Shape could move in and out of photographs. His Torchwood version has people coming out of old black and white movies.

I'm sure we'll find out exactly what this has to do with aliens and alien technologies (which as I'm sure you remember was supposed to be the original remit of Torchwood) when the time comes. Hammond's recent work for TV includes the 'Small Worlds' episode for the first series, so he's no stranger to Torchwood themes. [via DS]

I'm watching BBC Three and BBC Four quite a bit these days. It's got a cracking mix of comedy and documentaries that are seemingly aimed square at me. However, both channels have been under the threat of closure thanks to a funding gap of £2billion at the BBC, with people demanding that they should suffer in favour of news and current affairs.

Now, reports are suggesting that it is in fact BBC Two and BBC Four that are to be the hardest hit in the corporation's forthcoming budget cuts. Having said that BBC Four is safe from the chop, insiders believe the corporation will look to share content between the two channels, enabling them to reduce the total programming budget. The only great news on this is that the constant repeats of 2 Pints of Lager... will be shunted off to the TV glue boilers in the sky.