TV Week: I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here!, The IT Crowd and The Real Hustle: High Stakes

It's also, undoubtedly, the slickest and most expensive reality series on the box; with an array of stunts and challenges that make Big Brother's tasks look like children's party-games in comparison. Just in week 1 we've already had skydiving, river crossings, bug-eating, tree traps, eel tanks, boxes suspended above ravines, suits filled with insects, and many more. There's a decent mix of new bushtucker trials (or twists on the classics), to ensure your boredom threshold remains high.

This year in the jungle we have: a gay former-police chef (Brian Paddick) who often mentions he's gay; a footballer's wife (Carly Zucker) who's faded into the background like camouflage; an ex-EastEnder (cheeky cockney Joe Swash) whose brain-cells are going the way of his hair; a faded TV presenter (Dani Behr) who has proven to be a good cook; a matriarchal old boot (Esther Rantzen) who has yet to make an impression; an American cult actor (Star Trek's George Takei) who has taken a shine to Swash; a sports star (tennis player Martina Navratilova) whose presence is inexplicable; a glamour model (bosomy Nicola McLean) who takes waterfall showers in her bikini; a reviled celeb (chat show host/politician Robert Kilroy-Silk) who enjoys winding everyone up; a bland singer (former-Blue star Simon Webbe); an '80s pop-star (Dollar's David Van Day) who was livid everyone kept him locked up overnight when he arrived; and an '80s kid's entertainer (Timmy Mallett), who hasn't really been as wacky as many expected. ITV1, VARIOUS.

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Friday heralded the return of THE IT CROWD, now in its third series. This "geek-com" follows the surreal adventures of two clichéd I.T techs (Chris O'Dowd's Roy and Richard Ayoade's Mos) and their exasperated supervisor Jen (Katherine Parkinson), who are all trapped in basement-dwelling jobs of a big corporation, managed by incompetent eccentric Douglas Reynholm (Matt Berry).

Comparisons to Father Ted will follow co-creator Graham Linehan to his grave (not helped by the fact IT Crowd also features three oddballs, one of whom is a man-child), but it's never quite captured the Ted magic. As one of the few studio-based sitcoms that isn't pandering to realism right now, it's refreshing as a throwback to pre-Office times, but the characters lack much texture and charm (Roy and Mos are just a collection of tics and quirks) and the script's dependency on "set-up and pay-off" for its laughs are badly shoved into plots.

Linehan's skill clearly doesn't lie with plotting (erstwhile writing partner Arthur Matthews must have brought that flair to Ted), and the paucity of laughs in this series 3 premiere was noticeable – although the tearful laughter of the live studio audience suggested otherwise. To my ear, the laughs sounded like they'd been edited together from various takes, with a covering of canned-laughter on any dead spots. Subplots were either wasted (Mos and some bullies serviced three quick scenes), in slave-like service to the plot (Roy's sudden phobia of lending money), overly dumb and bizarre (Douglas shooting himself in the leg), or enjoyable but forgettable (Jen thinking her builder is pissing in her sink while she's at work.) 

Still, The IT Crowd sometimes gets its balance between character, story, jokes and surrealism right, but its hit-ratio is annoyingly low. On the evidence of this third reboot, it might be time to Control, Alt, Delete. CHANNEL 4, FRIDAYS, 10PM.

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THE REAL HUSTLE: HIGH STAKES is an attempt to keep the popular BBC Three show ticking over, after five series and two specials. Sadly, while this is still the channel's best home-grown series, it's now showing telltale signs of serious fatigue. While there are thousands of cons to "educate" its viewers about, they're essentially variations on just a handful of principles...

This sixth series (tagged High Stakes) offers a slight change in format: with one con fuelling the whole episode, split into two parts. However, fans of the series might feel patronized, as these extended cons are usually variations of old tricks, and there isn't much incentive to stick around to see the resolution. It's just too obvious how things are going to pan out.

The rapid-fire style of previous series was tight and enjoyable, but The Real Hustle is clearly struggling for material now. The latest episode featured a con where someone working in a bureau de change counted a customer's money and dropped a few notes onto the floor surreptitiously, before handing the cash over. And there was a celebrity walnut throwing competition, where the trick was to swap your walnut for one specially weighted. Yeah, it's hardly Ocean's Eleven, is it? BBC THREE, THURSDAYS, 10.30PM