Andy Hamilton (I)

One of the biggest problems with TV sitcoms centring on families is what to do when the child actors get older. This is particularly problematic with a show like Outnumbered, which returned for a fifth and final series this week, primarily because the comedy relied on the innocence and naivety of the kids. Almost seven years on, the children are looking incredibly old most noticeably Ramona Marquez who started playing Karen when she was only five. Now twelve years old, Marquez's Karen was the centre of the action this week as parents Pete (Hugh Dennis) and Sue (Claire Skinner) worried that she was fitting in at her new challenging school. To an extent I feel that writers Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin have updated the character well as she has now entered her stroppy pre-teen phase. She is a lot sulkier and I was shocked when I actually heard a swear word come out of her mouth. The school that Karen has been sent to has a very strict dress code and Karen is finding some of the work incredibly hard. She's also not fitting in all that well, as we see when she is forced to spend time with her one of her classmates after school. Karen's problems at school lead the ever-worried Sue to send out a late night e-mail to the parents of her daughter's classmates asking if they've had similar problems. The responses she receives are fairly shocking, prompting Pete to tell her that sending any e-mails after 11pm is a bad mistake. Whilst Karen's problems at school ring true, I was less interested in her search for a missing hamster. It just seemed to me like this story was something that Karen would've done while she's younger and I fail to believe that this new sulky brunette girl would be that bothered about a pet.

Elsewhere Karen's two brothers are more ill-served by the storylines especially Ben (Daniel Roche) who is auditioning for the school play. The character of Ben was great when he was a destructive young lad but as a teenager he seems to be a little lost. Though the thought of him playing the lead in a musical version of Spartacus did raise a few chuckles, this was the least realistic of the three plots. I did feel that there was more truth in the antics of older son Jake (Tyger Drew-Honey) who this week got a dodgy tattoo. This was a rite-of-passage story that a lot of teenagers have experienced and the fact that Jake wanted to remove the body art by the end of the episode was also incredibly realistic. Indeed, one thing that Hamilton and Jenkin have always excelled at is making their comedy feel as believable as possible. That's why Outnumbered worked so well when it started and why, for the most part, it still survives in 2014. Jake and Karen's story suited their progression and Pete and Sue continued to be the stereotypical fretting parents. The main thing I found about this series of Outnumbered, as compared to previous outings, is that I didn't laugh as much. While there were a few chuckles and a couple of titters I mostly felt that the comedy was well-observed but didn't find it funny enough to laugh out loud. Despite this I still found a lot to like about Outnumbered and feel that the chemistry between the five actors is still as fine as it was seven years ago. My only hope is that the Brockman family is given a fitting send-off and Outnumbered gets a suitably anarchic final series.

Outnumbered series 5 episode one review

Sitcoms have a limited life span, so when their creators - in this case, Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin - stretch them out for a prolonged amount of time, one can grow resentful. After tonight's edition of Outnumbered I was left with the unpleasant aftertaste of having witnessed an old dog being begrudgingly dragged out for a walk.

A fifth and final series for Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin's enduring sitcom. Modern life proves as irksome for Sue and Pete as ever: tempering the expectations of an increasingly gravelly voiced Ben ahead of his audition for Spartacus the Musical, guiding Karen through troubled times at school and dealing with a freshly inked-up Jake. The formula of Cute Kids Saying Cute seems slightly incongruous with a trio of t(w)eenagers chez Brockman, but they've earned this final furlong of hurrahs.

Andy Hamilton interview

Is the comedy writer behind Outnumbered and Drop the Dead Donkey finally losing the plot?

Sadly, our sole visit to the Brockman household this year suggests that the inevitable has finally happened: the young actors who play Ben and Karen are now too mature and self-aware for the comedy to work. Ben is alarmingly deep-voiced and large, and Karen - once the linch-pin of the show - has hardly any screen time at all. It's as if writers Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin have realised she no longer works as a character. If you remove the eccentric charm of Ben and Karen from the equation, then Outnumbered doesn't have any reason to exist. I suspect the fifth series next year will be the last.

The enduring success of TV's comedy prophets

Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin talk to Benji Wilson about a career in comedy.

Having set a new benchmark for sitcoms with Outnumbered, writing partners Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton know that expectations are high for their new pilot, part of Channel 4's Funny Fortnight. This one also centres around a squabbling suburban family, but that's pretty much where the similarities end. James Bolam and James Fleet play a father and son-in-law trying to negotiate a post-apocalyptic Britain in which economic collapse and climate change have created a lawless society of scavengers - think Survivors meets Steptoe & Son.

Having created the reigning champion of family sitcoms in Outnumbered, Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton take the genre into new territory - the future. Not the distant future but, as the title suggests, a few decades hence when economic collapse and rising sea levels have transformed life in Britain. The Pilch family struggle by in a house powered by batteries on a street beset by floods. There's plenty of black humour: casual asides refer to the Isle of Norwich and when Mick (James Bolam) admits to gambling away the Triple-A batteries, he explains, "I put them all on a dog fight... I bet on the dog and the bloke won."

An unspecified apocalypse has hit the UK, but petty suburban concerns linger on for the Pilch family: curmudgeonly old geezer James Bolam, hapless son-in-law James Fleet and bolshy grand-daughter Jennie Jacques. The next-door neighbour is still an irritant, although arguments revolve not around parking or foliage maintenance, but who dumped the corpse over the fence. Laptops are used to squash flies. And a formidable 'area commander' is on hand to dispense summary justice. There's the kernel of a good idea in Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin's show (their first since Outnumbered), but Just Around the Corner is a little too low key for its own good. The targets are soft, and the dull colours and dreary lives infect the writing and performances: the sitcom equivalent of a wet weekend.

Amid such sparkling absurdity this offering from Funny Fortnight, Just Around the Corner, lay like a damp squib. It is a comedy from Outnumbered creators Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton, about the Pilch family (Jameses Fleet and Bolam as son-and-father-in-law, and Jennie Jacques as Fleet's recalcitrant teenage daughter Kia), who live in what is now the isle of Norwich in a globally warmed and flooded Britain. The script was waterlogged, but much could be forgiven for Daisy Beaumont's shining turn as terrifying regional tyrant Big Delia. When paired with Fleet's peerless dithering, you felt happiness begin to break out once more.