Hugh Dennis

I saw Hugh Dennis once, carrying an enormous backpack and walking down Regent Street a few days before Christmas. Actually, I had to check to see if there were cameras following him, so much like his Outnumbered character, flustered dad-of-three Pete, did he appear. I think he caught my gawping, because he pulled that face he does on Mock the Week - lip curled, eyebrow up, face deadpan - so I looked away. Still don't know if there were cameras.

I get the impression this happens a lot. Because, after all, Outnumbered is a lot like real life. It's not the script that does it - that's good, though, like any of these two point four children sitcoms, a little cheesy too. No, it's the children. They don't seem to be acting at all. Take last night, when they thought they'd won half a million pounds from Reader's Digest. "We can buy school and close it down!" yelled Ben. "We could save the polar bears!" yelled Karen. On and on they went with their shopping list. Were they making it up as they went along? That's what it looked like. It's a little frightening, really. Children, I mean. They're monstrous, aren't they? Monstrous but also quite funny, especially for those of us who don't have them for real. It's a form of war tourism: look how Karen makes her granny squirm with her questions about weight! Isn't it awful? Thank god I don't have one. Phew.

One of the boys has been downloading "inappropriate" images of their teacher, which leads to an awkward family discussion about the meaning of inappropriate. But Dad (Hugh Dennis) tries not to worry. "They're just teenage boys," he tells his wife (Claire Skinner). "They're like baboons on heat. In school uniforms." Elsewhere in the house, five-year-old Karen (Ramona Marquez) is busy writing letters to President Obama. "I am beginning to lose my patience . . ." she begins. She is also developing a tough-love approach to prison reform. Prisoners, she says, should be put in holes in the ground. Occasionally soup should be poured in, forcing them to scoop it up in their hands. The trouble with children is that they don't appreciate the value of political correctness.

New nightly satirical round-up of election news from The Now Show's acerbic team, led as ever by Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis. How times change. Ther''ve been almighty ructions in the past about the BBC allowing topical comedy shows onto the airwaves during an election campaign. Now Radio 4 has this (Mondays through Wednesday nights), plus two weekly editions of What the Papers Say (Sundays and Wednesdays) while The News Quiz starts another series on Friday. But in the grim convergences of this campaign will there be enough for them all to make fun of?

Outnumbered success relies on the partly improvised dialogue derived from the interaction of the three children and their screen parents in various situations: in last week's episode, a trip round London with dad Pete's mother in tow. The youngest, Karen (Ramona Marquez), nine, is the star, her dialogue pursuing paths of childish logic to which Pete (Hugh Dennis) reacts with probably real bafflement. In previous series the adults had more of the screen; here they are pulled into the background more as feeds for the self-confident kids, no doubt ruminating on the phrase attributed to WC Fields, "Never act with children or animals".

Hugh Dennis' character sends sex txts

Outnumbered dad Pete follows in the footsteps of Ashley Cole and Vernon Kay as he gets caught sending sex texts.

It's wonderful to have Outnumbered back on our screens for a third series. If you've only just returned from a shopping trip to Mars, it is based on the life and times of two besieged middle-class parents (Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner) who are doing their best to raise three precocious children. It follows a comic tradition that goes back to Joyce Grenfell, but the brilliance of the show is the accuracy of the children's dialogue and the naturalism of their performances. Because so much of it is improvised, it is inevitable that some episodes won't be as strong as others. But tonight's, in which all the family (including the grandmother) go on a day trip to London, is a delight. I was enjoying it so much that I forgot to take notes in order to steal the best jokes.

At last - the family sitcom that reinvented family sitcoms returns for a third series. Back in 2007 Outnumbered was a blast of suburban fresh air; with its knowing kids running rings around bewildered adults, it felt dramatically and hilariously more real than anything that had gone before. It feels fractionally less fresh now but just as funny, as we rejoin the Brockmans on a sightseeing day out in London. Very soon, scarily precocious Karen (Ramona Marquez) is grumbling that she wants to go somewhere "more World- War-Two-ish" while uncontrollable Ben (Daniel Roche) is climbing on one of the Trafalgar Square lions and stabbing it with a ruler. "Die!" he shouts. "Die, Aslan, die!" Throughout, dad Pete (Hugh Dennis) wears his fixed expression of pain and confusion, like a baited bear. As a portrait of parenthood, it's terrific, even when the plotting, which includes a weary old joke involving a disabled loo, lets the side down. And the dialogue is as sharp as ever. "Look mummy," insists Karen, "I used to believe in wishes and all this nonsense but then my wish about Ben and the hyenas didn't come true."

Controversial series in that a lot of people think it's original and funny and a lot of people think it's a load of cliched nonsense. Well, grow up people. It's both. The sitcom narratives are rubbish old hat, the child actors are funny and Hugh Dennis is Hugh Dennis. The first ep of a new series sees them travel to London sight-seeing and have tired, weary problems with a disabled loo.

Time for series three, and yet again we ask the same question - how is it possible for child actors to be this funny? Episode one opens with Ben and Karen on a London sightseeing trip pondering how lions assisted during the Battle of Trafalgar and 'that king who thought he was made of glass', while parents Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner do an excellent line in bewildered.

The funniest kids on TV are back for a third series. But has Outnumbered become a victim of its own success? Back in 2007, when this was buried apologetically in the schedule's nether regions, there was a real novelty about small children being allowed to dictate proceedings. Now, after bagging three gongs at the British Comedy Awards last year, tonight's episode feels like an extended stand-up gig for Karen and Ben (Ramona Marquez and Daniel Roche).

You sit, arms folded, thinking, "Come on, then. Say something outrageous." Naturally, you don't have long to wait but the bits with the adults in between can feel like a distraction from the main event. That's not to take anything away from the show - just a sign of how hard it is to stay ahead of the game in comedy.

The Brockmans are on a sight-seeing trip around London tonight - an opportunity for Mum and Dad and Gran to be mortally embarrassed in front of a variety of internationally-recognisable landmarks. And from the one-liners the kids come out with, it really can't be much longer before they're invited on to the Have I Got News For You panel.

There are jokes about Gordon Brown tonight and the death of Diana that might have provoked howls of outrage if they were uttered by an adult. They still might but the power of these kids is that they can get away with anything - as their beleaguered parents (Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner) know only too well.