Philip Jackson

TV preview: Comedy Playhouse - Bumps, BBC One

Sometimes a sitcom has success written all over it. King Gary and Scarborough both had potential to be hits. Bumps feels like an instant hit. If the BBC doesn't commission a series they don't need their Fallopian tubes testing, they need their brains testing.

Bad Move: a confusing waste of Jack Dee's talents

The problem - OK, one of the problems - with Bad Move (ITV), Dee's sitcom with Pete Sinclair, which began a second series last night, is that Dee's character Steve is not made unhappy enough.

Raised By Wolves: saluting a hugely likeable sitcom

As Raised By Wolves concludes its ace second series on Channel 4, we tip our caps to a cleverly written sitcom...

Radio Times review

If you enjoyed BBC Four's series about retired folk in Dorset, Close to the Edge, here's the sitcom equivalent. The idea is that three 60-something couples (including Alison Steadman as uptight Joyce) are striding into retirement, keeping creaking marriages afloat and leaning on old friendships - the working title was "Grey Mates".

We rejoin them at the Calais Eurotunnel terminal, returning from a trip to a Christmas market. There are surly asides about Germans, gingerbread and saucy Santa toys, while Alan (Philip Jackson) wrestles with a voice-recognition phone line: "Didn't understand me, wouldn't let me finish," he sighs. "It's the computerised ticket line version of Joyce."

Channel 4 were hoping to replicate the success of the brilliant Catastrophe with their newest sitcom Raised by Wolves.

The comedy comes courtesy of renowned columnist and award-winning writer Caitlin Moran who created the series alongside her sister Caroline. The siblings based the show on their upbringing in Wolverhampton and are represented respectively by free-spirited Germaine (Helen Monks) and the much more sensible Aretha (Alexa Davies). Germaine and Aretha are two of the six children of Della (Rebekah Staton); the comedy's ballsy matriarch who named her daughters after strong female role models.

Although Raised by Wolves purports to be set in the present day, a fact we are aware of early on when the girl's Grampy (Philip Jackson) is on a laptop, most of what we see in the show seems very old fashioned. The characters of Aretha and Germaine especially don't feel part of the 21st century as the clothing they wear makes them seem like they belong in the late 1980s or early 1990s. This is probably because the Moran sisters have styled the characters to look exactly how they did in their formative years.

This odd mix of old style with modern setting meant I could never fully relax into Raised by Wolves; which is a shame as it did have some highlights.

The best thing about Raised by Wolves was definitely Staton's strong comic turn as the brilliant Della who I absolutely loved from the first time she appeared on screen. Jackson also proved to be a skilled comic presence whose scenes as the horny grandfather brilliantly broke up the action. However I personally wasn't impressed by the performances given by the younger actresses which may be partially due to the fact that their characters never really struck a chord with me.

Maybe I'm judging Raised by Wolves too soon and I'll definitely keep watching to see if there's any improvement in the forthcoming weeks. However, as I've often been a fan of Moran's writing, I expected more from a comedy that wasn't nearly as funny as it thought it was.