“High Spirits” is a multi-layered title: the caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827) was himself a heavy gambler and a heavy drinker, continually using up his material assets in such pursuits. His high spirits extended to the Georgian society he satirised with such robust good humour; high society and even low society attracted his interests, while he also expended enormous energy detailing political and sexual intrigues.

In terms of musical gravitas, style and general swag, Peter Andre ain’t no Frank Sinatra. He’s not even a Michael Bublé, but like Strictly Come Dancing in which the pop star is currently appearing (and which, by superfluous marketing cohesion, this album is released alongside), Come Fly With Me kind of sweeps you up and bounces you around a bit. Like a shop-bought cocktail from a squeezy metallic pouch, it's sweet and slightly fake, but it does the job.

“The music quacks, hoots, pants and gasps”: whichever of his Pravda scribes Stalin commandeered to demolish Shostakovich’s “tragedy-satire” in January 1936, two years into its wildly successful stage history, didn’t mean that as a compliment, but it defines one extreme of the ENO Orchestra’s stupendous playing under its new Music Director Mark Wigglesworth. On the other hand there are also heartbreaking tenderness, terrifying whispers and aching sensuousness.

Writer Anthony Horowitz is a busy man. Having written more than 40 books, he has also worked in many media. One year, he’s penning another series of the ever-popular Foyle’s War; the next he’s reviving the world of Sherlock Holmes in novels such as Moriarty; then it’s onto James Bond with Trigger Mortis. Now he casts his eagle eye on Saddam Hussein and shows how the blood-thirsty Iraqi dictator, who was paranoid about being assassinated, used to call in at the homes of private citizens, asking to eat and to stay.

Polo played in surplus First World War tanks; zeppelin-shooting as a gentlemanly leisure pursuit; the mighty vessel RMS Tyrannic, proud host of the Grand Ballroom Chariot Race and so safe "that she carries no insurance". These are just some of Canadian satirical writer and artist Bruce McCall’s ingenious retro-futurist creations. Slyly merging meticulous realism and madcap fantasy, they depict – with parodic faux-nostalgia – a world that never quite existed in order to comment on the one that does.

At the beginning of Act Two of John Savournin’s production of HMS Pinafore, the quarterdeck is in darkness. Kevin Greenlaw’s Captain Corcoran steps out of his cabin, downs a brandy stiffener, and launches into his melancholy lament to the moon. Woodwinds echo the ends of sighing phrases as the strings pluck their accompaniment: something about this sounds familiar.

Pallid figures in striplit rooms with too much empty space: if you’ve seen a Roy Andersson film before, you’ll know what to expect from his latest essay on the human comedy. Truly human the film becomes only by cautious degrees, even if we start out laughing at rather than sighing with characters like the hapless salesmen Sam (Nils Westblom) and Jonathan (Holge Andersson), who only want people to have fun with vampire teeth, a bag of laughs and a sinister rubber mask.

US films about and aimed at African Americans broadly fall into two categories: gangsta life in the ‘hood action flicks and broad comedies, the latter niche dominated by Tyler Perry, who does for Black Americans what Mrs Brown does for Irish women. Dear White People, on the other hand, is a sophisticated social satire in the vein of Spike Lee’s early She’s Gotta Have It or Bamboozled.

Should the BBC take the piss out of itself? Of course we must all laugh at our own failings, but the function of satire is to laser in on the faults of others for comedic ends. Isn’t it? The satirist's task is to point the finger elsewhere. Juvenal and Swift and Hislop don’t get up in the morning, look in the mirror and say, “Christ, I’m hilariously bad at what I do. I must tell the world.”

If A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence induces reflections on the nature of existence, the resultant mood could initially be very glum indeed. Swedish director Roy Andersson’s meditation is the self-declared “final part of a trilogy about being a human being”. It opens with three vignettes focusing on unexpected deaths and is, overall, grey in tenor. It is also, though, laced with humour and a very precise eye for changes of mood, the subtle differences between each of us and the tenderness which can bond even those who seem directly opposed to each other.