COMIC RELIEF 2023

BBC One & Two, from 7pm

The biennial comedy behemoth returns for another night of sketches, skits, surprises and starry performances to raise money for charitable good causes at home and around the planet. Leading the celebrity presenter line-up this year is actor David Tennant, who’s joined over the course of the evening by a string of other famous faces including Zoe Ball, Joel Dommett, AJ Odudu and Paddy Mcguinness.

Ghosts, Love Island, Doctor Who and The Traitors are among the top TV shows happily subjecting themselves to merciless parody, though this year’s most hotly anticipated sketch, by some distance, will be Tony Robinson’s return to the role of Baldrick (for the first time in almost a quarter of a century) reading a“blackadder bedtime story” written by Richard Curtis. It promises to be hilarious. Watch out, also,

for When Comic Relief Did Big Brother on BBC Two, at 10pm, looking back to 2001 when celebrities including Jack Dee, Vanessa Feltz and Claire Sweeney endured eight eventful days in the

Big Brother house for Comic Relief; and Comic Relief: The Best of the Best Bits, on BBC One at 10.40pm, which looks back at a multitude of highlights from the past 35 years of joyous extravaganzas. Gerard O’donovan

David Tennant co-hosts this year’s charity knees-up and stars in a Doctor Who sketch