The state of standup on the telly is under the microscope this week, with the announcement that Stewart Lee’s Alternative Comedy Experience has been axed by Comedy Central, while a new Russell Howard-helmed standup show is to be broadcast on the same channel. Coincidence? The arts critic Bruce Dessau certainly didn’t think so, blogging on the subject under the headline Russell Howard 1, Stewart Lee 0. (Lee has mocked Howard, tongue-in-cheek or otherwise, in his live act.) Howard’s new show, writes Dessau, “sounds ominously like a cross between Live at the Electric and Live at the Apollo”, and diminishes the variety (and quality?) of standup on the small screen.

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Dessau wasn’t the first to lament the passing of the Alternative Comedy Experience. To the Independent’s Alice Jones, its axing signalled “the demise of real standup on TV”. But the reaction on Twitter to Dessau’s piece suggested that not everybody – not all standups, at any rate – feel the same. Dara O Briain joined the conversation, suggesting that any show that gives airtime to Sara Pascoe and Andrew Maxwell (as Howard’s new one will) shouldn’t be so loftily dismissed. John Robins agreed, strongly challenging Stewart Lee’s supposed monopoly on the idea of “alternative”. Robins protests that Lee is the first to dismiss Russell Howard’s Good News as irredeemably mainstream, “without acknowledging it did far more for new, unheard-of acts than he did”.

You can hear the sound of axes grinding, of course – not all comedians are delighted with the equation Lee makes between appearing on Live at the Apollo and being a corporate sellout. But the point is valid: if you consider the comics who have performed on Good News over the past five years (they include Wil Hodgson, Liam Williams, Paul Foot and Tony Law), and those Lee showcased on Alternative Comedy Experience (Henning Wehn and Nish Kumar, Paul Foot and Tony Law), the latter aren’t dramatically more “alternative”. Nor is it clear that Lee’s motives are always purer than the careerist agenda he identifies elsewhere. When Alternative Comedy Experience was launched, he defined its appeal by stating that “the comedians on this show do not wake up thinking, ‘How can I develop something that will appeal to people in marketing?’” When it was cancelled, the consolation, he told one interviewer, was that “now there’s some really good footage of great acts out there”. Which sounds, at least in part, like an audience development/marketing consideration to me.

Russell Howard review – 'beige comedy with nothing to say' Read more

So where does this leave televised standup? Perhaps not in the rudest of health. Even if Lee’s curation of Alternative Comedy Experience wasn’t as adventurous as he’d like you to think it was, it had a better record than Good News (and, of course, Live at the Apollo) when it comes to gender parity. Its independent spirit was important – particularly when, as Lee rightly keeps banging on about, powerful management companies are gaining too much power over comedy broadcasting. And, as Jones writes, it resembled real-world comedy, too – it was shot in Edinburgh’s the Stand comedy club, and captured more of the democratic experience of live standup than its glitzier alternatives. This isn’t just an argument about personnel, it’s about what story is told about standup. On McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, on Live at the Apollo, it’s a clean, stylish affair with a high-status performer impressing a pliant crowd. Live, and at its most exciting, it’s much rougher, more fluid and more volatile than that.

This would usually be the point for me to demand a TV format that accommodates that liveness; one that makes space for radical comedy, political comedy, is-it-really comedy, interactive comedy. But I guess that is not telly’s job. If you want comedy to feel like that, go watch it live. In the meantime, we’re entitled to hope that the small-screen comedy showcases as wide a variety of styles, worldviews and imaginations as possible, that it isn’t reduced to the publicity arm of one or two powerful agencies, and that it gives you an inkling of how exciting standup can be when you’re in the room with it.

Three to see

Des Bishop

The Irish-American standup, best known for his unforgettable show about his dad in 2010, returns with a revival of his 2014 Edinburgh festival hit about a year spent in China.

• At Soho theatre, London, 31 March-11 April.

Tim Vine

Milton Jones’s only rival for the title of Britain’s punner-in-chief takes to the road with a reprise of his 2014 Edinburgh fringe show, Tim Timinee Tim Timinee Tim Tim to You.

• At Redgrave theatre, Bristol, 1-4 April.Then touring.

Jonny and the Baptists

The musical-comedy double act who famously inspired the wrath of Ukip last year are now embarking on their pre-general election Rock the Vote tour, offering discount tickets for first-time voters.

• At Old Fire Station, Oxford, 2 April. At Rondo, Bath, 3 April. Then touring.