Russell Tovey

Series Two of the bedsitcom opens with Becky moving in with boyfriend Steve.

And I know the perfect house-warming gift for her: a massive Do Not Disturb sign to stop any more unwelcome interruptions from the endless stream of ­visitors who keep ­dropping in on the pair of them.

Tonight, they're politely humouring Becky's borderline fascist sister Laura and her sociopathic fiance Paul, who demands Steve be his best man and lay on some violence and lap-dancing in Newcastle.

Despite sounding like X Factor rejects from the groups section, Him & Her (beautifully played by Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani) are a real rarity - a couple who love each other in identical amounts.

Their lifestyle may be reduced almost to the level of basic bodily functions, but they're so content in their togetherness they make staying in and doing nothing look positively aspirational.

Gay Tovey loves screen sex with Solemani

Him & Her actor Russell Tovey loves filming his sex scenes with co-star Sarah Solemani - even though he's gay.

The anti-romantic comedy Him & Her returns for a second series, once again focusing on the lives of feckless, unemployed twentysomethings Steve (Russell Tovey) and Becky (Sarah Solemani). BBC Three's most successful sitcom, its crude, one-track simplicity can wear thin quickly.

Russell Tovey: 'I do have excess wind!'

Russell Tovey stars in the second series of Him & Her this week...

Starting from a preposterous premise - Alice and boyfriend Mitch have drug-fuelled sex with gay flatmate Richie; Alice gets pregnant; all three decide to raise baby together - this rambunctious comedy manages to get hearty, and frequently filthy, laughs from its unlikely situation.

The three leads, Amy Huberman, Stephen Wight and Emun Elliott, have the easy rapport of true friends; Wight seems to be channelling Russell Tovey (a good thing) and Huberman is brilliant as the fretful Alice - the fear on her face as she enters a pram shop made me laugh out loud. And look out for Pauline McLynn in the second of tonight's double bill, in a terrific turn as Alice's monstrous mother.

The humour is suitably broad for the subject matter - there are enough drinks, drugs and sex tonight to fuel a Trainspotting sequel - but there are neat gags, and a wonderful bit of physical comedy involving an escalator, a mobile phone and the results of a sperm test.

First shown on BBC Three last autumn, this sitcom gets its first terrestrial airing. It's based in the bedsit of unemployed twentysomething couple Steve (Being Human's excellent Russell Tovey) and Becky (comedian Sarah Solemani) as the pair laze around in bed, drinking, eating, having sex and bickering. It's low-key, slightly grubby and observational in the vein of The Royle Family.

Re-cut and largely refilmed from the Comedy Lab pilot, David Cross (best known as Tobias Fünke from Arrested Development and the legendary early HBO sketch show Mr Show) stars again as the clueless US temp mistakenly sent to head his company's UK division. The biggest change from the pilot is the recasting of Todd's sole employee Dave - out goes Russell Tovey, in comes a much more charming Blake Harrison, aka Neil from The Inbetweeners. Everything else, including cameos from Will Arnett and Spike Jonze, remains more or less in place and it's a funny and promising start.

The best British comedy right now is Him & Her, which couldn't be more different from US sitcom Modern Family. You imagine the latter being devised in the classic American way, with a team of crack writers being locked in a room, fed pizzas pushed under the door and only let out once they'd delivered scripts as tight as Gloria the Colombian trophy-wife's dresses.

Him & Her, on the other hand, looks like it's come out of the BBC3 glooper which produces programmes for feckless twentysomethings who don't actually watch TV. But while its central characters are two feckless twentysomethings who for five episodes now have not left their mingin' cowp of a flat (tomorrow's the last one and I don't expect the situation to change), Stefan Golaszewski's romcom is, in these surroundings, a jam and fluff-covered gem featuring charming performances from Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani as Steve and Becky.

Despite their differences, Him & Her and Modern Family had things in common last week beyond their quality. In both, a character brought a girl home, prompting consternation. Parents fussed over daughters and Steve proved just as useless as Mitchell with a hammer in his hand. He was meeting Becky's parents for the first time. "I'm a people person," he said afterwards. "No you're not," said Becks, shutting the door on the world again.

While most of the noise has been about a patchy series of The Inbetweeners, Him & Her has wormed its way into tvBite's heart. The two leads, Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani are absolutely superb. Genuinely excellent, well worth catching on iPlayer while you can.