Adam Miller

Expect some pearl-clutching tabloid outrage about this. Bernadette Davis's comedy introduces a quartet of girls in their mid-teens who swear, have sex and regularly countermand their mothers and fathers! Yet while parents of girls approaching that age may well blanch, there's some depth to lead character Viva (Adelayo Adedayo), who's rebelling against her dad (Colin Salmon) because he's seeing her school football coach (Dolly Wells).

The script mixes deft set pieces with cheap laughs - the mute girl in a burqa made me uncomfortable - but the direction, by Adam Miller, is consistently great: plenty of swift visual gags and a very funny, lairy girls' football match filmed in slow motion.

Farewell to Mongrels

Tonight's episode brings to a close this series of Mongrels and I'd like to take the opportunity to thank the lovely viewers that have stuck with us and posted their support on our Facebook site, Youtube, Twitter and elsewhere.

Slightly dubious new puppet-based sitcom created by Adam Miller. In this second episode, Destiny finds a novel way of finding her perfect man, while Nelson looks after a runt. There's also Kali, the pigeon, whose contempt for religion leads to him plotting the death of old friend and born-again Christian, Dean. Imagine a foul-mouthed Muppet Show set in Croydon and you're somewhere near the territory of Mongrels.

How to have a TV show broadcast and avoid counselling

You're told by everyone in the business from the outset not to read reviews, but realistically, unless you plan a trip to the Gobi Desert over the broadcast, then curiosity will get the better of you. And my God are there a lot of reviews and websites you can beat yourself up with.

I'm reviewing Mongrels because it is the most radical take on furry animals since The Itchy & Scratchy Show. Its twin jokes are to imbue animals with the worst rather than most charming human attributes and, second, to challenge the convention that puppets are fit only for children. Mongrels, which began an eight-part post-watershed run last night, is the dirtiest puppet show since Zippy made a foreskin joke on an in-house Christmas edition of Rainbow.

Actually, Nelson, the fox, was one of the gentler beasts among the creator Adam Miller's dark menagerie. A lonely Boggle cheat, he was a gentle soul whose greatest crime, initially, was to pretend on a dating site that he was Toby Anstis (a former star of CBBC, you know). But then his date, Wendy, lied too. For one thing she was a chicken. For another she was married - she claimed to a "wife-pecker" who abused her so badly that she mislaid. "It was," she said, "like giving birth to an omelette." Intimacy becomes an issue for these DNA-crossed lovers. When a fox and a chicken kiss it looks like the fox is having supper. In the end, tiring of her lies, Nelson cuts off Wendy's head with a plastic knife in an inner-city Mississippi Fried Chicken restaurant.

Nelson is still nicer than the bitchy Afghan bitch Destiny who at a Strictly Dog Dancing session with her widowed owner remarks that most people have to fly a plane into a skyscraper before they are surrounded by this many virgins. Meanwhile, Marion the cat is well on the way to becoming a serial murderer of old ladies. Harold Shipman got a mention, as did Anne Frank. Mary Whitehouse once complained about an episode of Pinky and Perky. She would have had a field day with this. Best taken with a couple of pints of lager, Mongrels is a hit even if you're sober. Surely, though, it should be called Creature Discomforts.

Puppets, sex and Paul Kaye: The birth of Mongrels

When asked to describe Mongrels, as I often am by bemused people at parties who've been told I work 'with puppets' and who are humouring me, I normally say, "It's an adult puppet comedy show."