Michele Hewitson: Is the new Comedy Central channel any good?

We all need to cheer up, apparently, so what good timing: The Comedy Central channel was launched yesterday, April Fool's day.

Some of the offerings are older than "why did the chicken cross the road?". The Young Ones? That might be of interest, in a historical sort of way, to us older ones. The Goodies? You'd have to be as stoned as the not-so-gently decaying gay couple on The Sarah Silverman Show to get into The Goodies, I suspect. The gay couple met at high school where they smoked dope in the boys' room despite fears that smoking dope can make you gay. That's pretty funny.

So is Silverman's dating God, who turns out to have "boundary issues". God gets stoned with the gay guys, gets drunk at the school reunion, falls down the stairs - a turn which becomes a YouTube hit.

Silverman is the very rude comedian who had a YouTube hit with her very rude song about having it off with Matt Damon (the clip starred Damon) as a way of breaking this news to her bloke of five years, Jimmy Kimmel, when she appeared on his talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Kimmel then wrote a song about what he'd got up to with Ben Affleck, aired, of course, on his talk show. This was all only rude joking.

There is a talk show host: Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report, a parody of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor - not difficult given that O'Reilly seems to be a parody of himself. Colbert still believes in the Cold War. He rings "China Palace" and pretends to be Putin.

"This is Vladimir Putin. I am Russian."

"Can I take your order?"

"See, they're taking orders from Putin. Is your refrigerator running?"

"Is this a prank call?"

"No. I mean yes."

Free Radio is another parody: of a bunch of losers running a radio station. It is fitfully funny, but you couldn't accuse the first episode of causing fits. There are real celebrity guests - Jack Coleman from Heroes, the woman who invented Spanx pants - who attempt to answer moronic questions. Such as: It is fair on guys who go home with a hot chick wearing Spanx pants to discover, "she's so fat it makes him puke?"

Silverman made an appearance on Entourage, another of Comedy Central's offerings, which has screened here before but is, I'd have to say, more welcome back than The Goodies. Well, we're hooked, again. Based on the rise and rise of an actor, pretty boy Vince, whose life might be a bit like that of Mark Wahlberg (he's an executive producer), the entourage is four blokes from Queens who hang out in Hollywood, getting stoned and picking up girls and none of them quite believing their luck. Neither can we, which lends a shaky edge to the proposition. We like a good telly shark, and Ari Gold does psycho agent sharky to perfection.

You do have to wonder if there's a limit to how many comedy shows pretending to be reality shows parodying real shows and really big egos we can take. Maybe not. A show about a male presenter who appears on a little-watched breakfast programme, who thinks he's a comedy genius? No, you couldn't make up Paul Henry.