Jessica Knappett

E4 was aiming for the new Inbetweeners but ended up with the new Coming of Age - Drifters was one of the worst comedies of any year. Cartoon characters, gags that ranged from the mind-numbingly obvious - adults acting like teenagers - to the offensive - depression played for laughs - and a truly bizarre lead performance from a wide-eyed Jessica Knappett, gurning her way through all 138 painful minutes.

You're never far from a laugh with Jessica Knappett's comedy of early 20s malaise. In this final episode, the girls are desperate to make some extra cash, so Bunny naively offers to model for a painter, while Laura toughs it out as her agent. Meanwhile, Meg's creepy ex, Mark, comes into his own when he hosts a 90s night, complete with a crowd full of adoring women and a guest appearance from Pat Sharp. And, in a plot that illustrates Meg's selfishness, when he finds a new girlfriend she realises she wants him back.

Jessica Knappett interview

'I had to move at least a few miles away but not too far away so I could still pop back for a Sunday roast.' Jessica Knappett clearly chose the University of Manchester for all the right reasons.

Drifters exceeds my early expectations

I caught up with Jessica Knappett's E4 sitcom Drifters last week and was more than pleasantly surprised.

The girls from The Inbetweeners Movie have swapped adolescent woes for adult awkwardness in this lighthearted not-quite-a-spinoff set in Leeds. Last week's double bill had us enter the world of salesgirls Meg, Laura and Bunny as they struggle with bad sexual encounters, weirdo boss Malcolm and the general awfulness of their post-university existence. In episode three, Meg (Jessica Knappett) lands an internship with a racy radio show, and a nightmare prompts Laura to suspect boyfriend Gary is cheating.

Gags from the girls: Jessica Knappett

Jessica Knappett would like to make one thing clear - the E4 sitcom Drifters she has written and stars in is categorically not a spin-off of The Inbetweeners.

The new Girls? A female Inbetweeners? Both lazy labels, both lazily applied to this new female-led comedy written by and starring Jessica Knappett. The similarities are insultingly superficial - young, independent women living it large, albeit in Leeds. At least on the basis of this opening double bill, Drifters isn't yet in the same league.

'Yet', because there is real promise, especially in a second episode (at 9.30pm) featuring a bad date of oysters, profanity and, later, an attack of scabies. But the opener, as two friends return from travelling 'the whole way round some of India' to a muted welcome, is sluggish and the lead characters Laura (brassy, slutty), Bunny (dreamy, gullible) and Meg (the relatively sensible one) are sketchily drawn. Too many of the jokes are reliant on easy 'girls behaving badly' tropes rather than anything harder to execute, but there's no faulting the enthusiasm or energy with which it's carried out.

Hitching a ride on the coat-tails of the seventh series of The Big Bang Theory, this new British sitcom might not have a snowball's chance in hell of matching that for clever gags.

But give it a chance. It's written by and stars Jessica Knappett as Meg alongside Lydia Rose Bewley and Lauren O'Rourke, who were all in The Inbetweeners Movie.

But as these girls are in their mid-20s, it's closer in age (if not in cleverness) to Lena Dunham's Girls than a female Inbetweeners, mining that period after university when your dream career fails to drop into your lap and you end up drifting between dead-end jobs and even more dead-end relationships.

Arabella Weir and Bob Mortimer play Meg's parents.

Best bit of the second episode of tonight's double bill shows why you should never order oysters on a first date. Set in Leeds, its crassness is part of its charm.

Jessica Knappett: why she's not a female Inbetweener

The writer and star of the new E4 sitcom talks Girls, Bob Mortimer, dressing up as a giant mobile phone and the second Inbetweeners movie...