One of the great pleasures of being a critic is watching a career develop, and Stewart Lee’s is one that I’ve had the pleasure of, so to speak, for many years.

In a week unfeasibly packed with new drama across the BBC and ITV, the three-part Exile may prove to be the one that lingers longest. It was a thriller and a detective story, but what gave it its formidable grip was the way the central mystery was intricately entwined with the painful personal story of  Tom Ronstadt (John Simm) and his father Sam (Jim Broadbent).

ITV1 really, really loves that succulent two-hour slot in the middle of Sunday evening, and anything that goes in there has the legacy of Morse, Lewis, Frost, Miss Marple et al to live up to. The latest cunning plan for Detective Sunday is to recruit the rather excellent Brenda Blethyn to play DCI Vera Stanhope in adaptations of Ann Cleeves's novels, set in the author's native North-East.

The flying Twitter fragments said more about The Wedding than the battalions of experts, "palace insiders", historians and friends ever could (couldn't somebody have put a bag over Simon "infinite loop" Schama's head and had him bundled away from the BBC studio in the boot of a car?) Everybody seemed to adore Kate's dress. Some suggested that princesses Eugenie and Beatrice were in drag. "The Royal Family is BACK", tweeted Piers Morgan. "#proudtobeenglish" added former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan.

“There’s no place like home… there’s no place like home… there’s no place like home…” A wish became a mantra and then became a happy ending, when Dorothy wiggled her ruby-red shoes in the MGM movie version of L Frank Baum’s fairy story. But this documentary didn’t even get to the most watched film in the history of cinema until its closing 10 minutes: perhaps because its makers were concerned that if they’d called it “The Story of L Frank Baum” it wouldn’t have found an audience.

There is little rational explanation for why Giles Coren and Sue Perkins are still on the television, other than that the trained ferrets have still not yet been found. They brought their inimitable, emetic style to royal weddings with last night's Giles and Sue's Royal Wedding on BBC Two. Were one forgiving (very forgiving), you could call their shtick - making every obvious joke going, hamming up their historical situations - ironic.

As the makers of The Kennedys discovered recently, turning history into TV drama can be like locking yourself in the stocks and inviting all-comers to hurl coconuts at your head. This dramatisation of the 1950s Manchester United team and its traumatic near-destruction in the 1958 Munich air disaster has been duly lambasted by Sandy Busby, the son of former Manchester United manager Matt Busby, and others who were affected by the real-life events.

Everybody knows One Thousand and One Nights, even if they don’t know they do. Ever been to the panto to see Aladdin? Watched Sinbad the Sailor on stage, or Sheherazade at the opera or ballet, or perhaps watched one the many film versions of The Thief of Baghdad? Yes to any of those and you’re a fan of possibly one of the greatest series of stories ever told.

Dan Snow's toxic trilogy climaxed in New York, where he crawled voyeuristically through the rotten core of the Big Apple. It was part Discovery Channel documentary, part Gangs of New York dirty realism, as Snow took a frankly indecent relish in regaling us with tales of death, disease and raw capitalism at its baby-eating worst.

I made the mistake of catching up with the darkly sumptuous The Crimson Petal and the White just before knuckling down to review this new two-part drama, and it was like moving from fine vintage wine to warm supermarket-brand lager. To begin with, I couldn’t dissociate Ashley Jensen from her perky but dim character in Extras, so the moment she found herself confronted with a game-show-from-hell scenario of committing a murder in return for five million quid, I expected Ricky Gervais to pop up in the next scene, giving her wisecrack-littered advice on what to do next.