Chris Bourn

Impish family kibitzing this episode gives way to wall-to-wall haranguing, as grandma brings her new boyfriend to dinner. Flashes of Inbetweeners-style brinkmanship in what's acceptable abound, as the Goodmans are forced to appreciate the presence of an octogenarian fuck-buddy in their matriarch's life. Fans of Mark Heap will be disappointed with minimal creepy-neighbour shtick this time round. But Harry Landis's demonic suitor, Mr Morris, more than makes up for this, stealing the show - and possibly the series - as an archetype of doddering evil. If creator Robert Popper is conducting some sort of twisted experiment to find the most grotesque and misshapen form into which the traditional family sitcom can be contorted, then the final five minutes of this show are probably a bit of a breakthrough. At least a nine point five on the shudderometer.

Scripting a broad comedy scene around a rebellious teenage girl ironically reading the Quran is either really brave or really stupid. And that just about sums up this inheritor to the racially dysfunctional sitcoms of the '70s - Love Thy Neighbour et al. Of course, this being 2012, the intentions are sound. The show's normalising image of British Muslim family life will (we hope) bring out any EDL-oriented viewers in hives, and you don't have to have been raised in a Pakistani household to recognise how keenly the Khan family and their pompous patriarch have been drawn. What really rockets this back to the bad old days of suburban sitcom is the abject awfulness of the gags. Episode one, certainly, is a litany of sub-Terry & June mugging. And that is what makes Citizen Khan so deeply offensive.