Conan comes to Hong Kong; Vicky Lau goes on a Culinary Journey; Penny Dreadful returns

This Wednesday, we welcome flame-haired comedian Conan O'Brien to our screens, as FX premieres the comic's late-night chat show, Conan. Airing four nights a week, Wednesdays to Saturdays, at 11pm - each episode showing within 36 hours of its United States telecast - the topical humour should still be relevant. "Coco" will be assisted by his portly sidekick, Andy Richter, and long-time house band as he draws laughs from news stories, political figures and celebrities.

Conan follows the same talk-show formula that O'Brien, a former writer on Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons, honed during his tenure as host of The Tonight Show and Late Night: an opening monologue followed by a couple of celebrity interviews and a music or comedy number. It's hardly groundbreaking stuff and there are funnier hosts and better interviewers out there, but the wise-cracking O'Brien proves to be an entertaining mix of nerdy and self-deprecating, and feels a little more free-spirited than your Lettermans and Lenos.

Starting on mountainside tea farms, a once dreamy landscape now full of tourists, the chef-owner of Michelin-starred Tate Dining Room & Bar, in Central, learns how to create the legendary dragon-well tea shrimp before joining Colin Cheng, chef of 28 HuBin Road (a posh nosh place in Hangzhou, apparently), to learn the secrets behind a dish that started as a mistake during the Qing dynasty.

As cooking shows go, Culinary Journeys makes for a tasty and refreshing change; Lau is not just another celebrity cooking "genius" blowing his or her own trumpet, and humbly she admits she still has a lot to learn about Chinese cuisine.

Tuesday night will see the return of all manner of beasts and ghoulies in the second series of the erotically charged and profoundly unsettling Penny Dreadful (FX, 10pm).