Andy Samberg

Chances are you won't know the star of this new sitcom, but Andy Samberg is well known in the US as a regular on Saturday Night Live and as part of the comedy troupe The Lonely Island.

Here he plays an American hippie called Cuckoo, perhaps not the last person on Earth you'd want your ­brilliant daughter to bring home from her gap year in Thailand, but not your first choice for ­son-in-law material, either.

Thanks to Samberg's subtly distracted performance, this is even funnier than it must have been on the page.

Cuckoo is new-age nonsense personified, but still cheesy enough to nick a chat-up line from Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Helen Baxendale and Greg Davies play shocked parents Lorna and Ken, with Tamla Kari as their smitten daughter Rachel and Tyger Drew-Honey from Outnumbered as Rachel's brother.

The scene when he ridicules Cuckoo over his name is even funnier when you remember his own name is Tyger.

Cuckoo is an American hippy who spends his days sleeping, meditating to whale music and spouting new age nonsense. Imagine the horror of Ken and Lorna, a very conventional couple from Lichfield, when their darling daughter returns from her gap year with a ring on her finger and this dreadlocked idler on her arm.

Stand-up comedian Greg Davies (best known as the vindictive headmaster Mr Gilbert in The Inbetweeners) plays Ken and is a joy to watch: all boggling eyes and flared nostrils. Helen Baxendale is more restrained as Lorna, Outnumbered star Tyger Drew-Honey plays the petulant younger brother and US actor Andy Samberg, a former Saturday Night Live regular, is brilliantly barmy as Cuckoo. This first episode takes a while to find its feet but the final scene is a corker.

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A stint on Saturday Night Live is the TV equivalent of an Oxbridge degree. Successful alumni are expected to bring Hollywood to its knees, not crash-land straight into a BBC3 sitcom set in the Midlands. It's odd, therefore, to see one of its brightest stars of recent years, Andy Samberg, playing hippy doucheboat Cuckoo in the first episode of this of this gentle comedy. When gap-year student Rachel marries layabout traveller Cuckoo in Thailand and brings him back to the family home, he ends up doing for dad (Greg Davies) what Mike did for Alf Garnett - eating his food and making him look like a buffoon. The Inbetweeners star is forced to play it straight while Samberg effortlessly steals every scene. There's potential here, but anyone hoping for some SNL gold dust will be disappointed.

New sitcom starring giant actor Greg Davies as patriarch Ken who is introduced to his new son-in-law Cuckoo for the first time in the arrivals lounge on his daughter Rachel's return from her gap year in Thailand. It's an understandable shock, particularly as Cuckoo is a colossal bellend. This travelling hippy (Andy Samberg) has spiritual psychobabble up the wazoo and hopes to loaf around his new family home while he writes a book. All but Ken and his son Dylan (Tyger Drew-Honey) are taken in by his cod philosophy, even his wife Lorna (Helen Baxendale); it's a pretty promising start.

British and American humour clash head-on in Robin French and Kieron Quirke's comedy which, on the evidence of the opener, manages to be both funny and annoying. When Rachel (Tamla Kari) arrives home from her gap year in Thailand, she surprises her doting, quirky parents, Ken and Lorna (the excellent Greg Davies and Helen Baxendale), by introducing them to her new husband, Cuckoo (American actor/comic Andy Samberg), claiming she told everyone about the wedding on Facebook. "I don't do Facebook, I'm 45," replies her dad. Cuckoo describes himself as "part teacher, part visionary, part firebrand". Needless to say, Ken isn't exactly enamoured with the goonish Cuckoo and wonders how her new man is going to support his impressionable daughter.

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