Those of you who survive the weekend's beer- fest (with a little rugby thrown in) may be looking forward to some well-earned couch time once you resurface. Why not sit back, relax and leave the entertaining to the professionals in The History of The Joke (History Channel; Wednesday at 9pm) - it will be April Fool's Day after all. It's hard to tell with a host like Lewis Black whether the premise of the two-hour special is, in fact, also a big fat joke; Black posits that 'comedians thrive on jokes, we are addicted; most of us would sell our souls to find the magic formula to create the greatest joke ever told.'

To begin the process, the History Channel manages to find a professor Richard Wiseman, of England's University of Hertfordshire, who claims to have discovered the world's funniest joke through extensive internet surveys. As he drones on and on about the accuracy of his methodology, Black retaliates by enlisting more than 50 of the funniest comedians from North America and Britain to help him get to the heart - or gut - of the laughing matter. The star-wattage of the line-up breaks the meter; among the laughter mongers on parade are Shelley Berman, the late George Carlin, Kathy Griffin, George Lopez, Jimmy Carr, Kathleen Madigan, Penn & Teller (seated right, with Black), Suzanne Westenhoefer and Robin Williams - and that's only the A-listers.

The programme tries to break down the art of telling jokes into its component elements and brings up a few touchy subjects: are joke-tellers born or made? Can women be funny? How dirty can you get when working 'blue'? And, perhaps most fundamentally, what is laughter?