Sean Michael Verey

The soft-centred babies-making-babies sitcom returns for a third series, with Laura and Jamie (Scarlett Alice Johnson and Sean Michael Verey) having trouble adjusting to life as a couple.

Well, Laura's having trouble and is trying to find a way of dumping her dimple-cheeked lover boy yet again.

"It's like watching someone torture a puppy. Stop messing him around," observes her waspish best friend, which is pretty much the size of it. Angus Deayton and Anna Chancellor co-star.

Radio Times review

BBC Three has always struck me as the most unlikely home for this soft-centred, blandly pleasing sitcom. It's not particularly sweary, its characters are inoffensive and it even flutters on the outskirts of twee, so it's hardly up there with Two Pints of Lager or Bad Education.

As we reach the third series young, accidental parents Jamie and Laura (Sean Michael Verey and Scarlett Alice Johnson), who conceived a baby after a misguided one-night stand, have a polite relationship for the sake of their little one.

But their parents are fractious and in chaos - Jamie's feckless dad has spent the family's money and they are evicted from their home, while Laura's high-flying mum (Anna Chancellor) is still in New York, communicating bad-temperedly via Skype with her estranged husband (Angus Deayton).

Sean Michael Verey interview

I caught up with Sean Michael Verey to chat about what's in store for Jamie this series, as well as getting his thoughts as to why Pramface remains under the radar...

The second series of this fine sitcom about teen parenthood continues with young Laura (Scarlett Alice Johnson) receiving a work placement. As a result she insists on father Jamie (Sean Michael Verey) babysitting for their child, Emily. But Jamie has an exam. Chaos ensues when Jamie decides to leave Emily with inexperienced childminders Mike (Dylan Edwards) and Beth (Yasmin Paige).

Interview with the stars of Pramface

Kicking off comedy on BBC Three for 2013 was Pramface. The day after, I met up with Scarlett Alice Johnson and Sean Michael Verey who play Laura and Jamie, to see what they had to say about the upcoming series.

Funny, charming and truthful, Pramface draws to a close. Thanks to sharp characters and Chris Reddy's pitch-perfect script, it has become one of BBC Three's best comedies. Heavily pregnant Laura (Scarlett Alice Johnson) is bored of being stuck at home and convinces Jamie (Sean Michael Verey) to take her shopping. Mike (Dylan Edwards) decides to put the pot from a charity run to a less charitable cause - his sex life - but is rumbled by Beth (Yasmin Paige). Meanwhile, Keith (Ben Crompton) and Sandra (Bronagh Gallagher) go on a revelatory holiday.

The penultimate episode of the amusing comedy drama about two teenagers who meet at a party and find out that 18 year-old Laura (Scarlett Alice Johnson) is pregnant. With three months until the birth, Laura is still living at Jamie's (Sean Michael Verey) house and his parents are keen for her to move back home. Meanwhile, Laura's parents Alan (Angus Deayton) and Janet decide to make a go of their marriage and plan a weekend break away.

Chris Reddy's delightful comedy revolves around Laura (Scarlett Alice Johnson) trying to cope with becoming pregnant after a one night stand with 16-year-old Jamie (Sean Michael Verey). As Laura heads off to Edinburgh University, she believes that she can put her "situation" to one side - but is followed by Jamie.

Another charming episode proves last week's opening part of this new comedy wasn't a one-off. Newly pregnant Laura (Scarlett Alice Johnson) is still grappling with the full consequences of her one-night stand with 16-year-old Jamie (Sean Michael Verey) when her parents (Angus Deayton and Anna Chancellor) find out - in less than ideal circumstances.

The attractiveness of the British teenager may be as hard to detect as the Higgs boson particle, but it doesn't stop TV producers from putting more and more of them before the cameras for our inspection. Following the success of Skins and The Inbetweeners comes Pramface, a comedy of virginity, sex and pregnancy (yes, in that order) among the GCSE-sitting classes, and the discomfiture of their parents.

Sweet-faced but lecherous Jamie (Sean Michael Verey) and his conceited babe-magnet friend Mike (Dylan Edwards) are 16, have just finished their exams and are anxious to crash a party thrown by cooler and more grown-up schoolkids. "There may be scenes of a sexual nature," confides Mike, who wears green shirts with Harry Hill collars, sprays Lynx in his underpants and has made a shag-along soundtrack on his iPhone that ends with the theme to Top Gear. Elsewhere, pretty, 18-year-old A-leveller Laura (Scarlett Alice Johnson) has been grounded for smoking dope. She has a turn of phrase that shocks her anxious parents, Anna Chancellor and Angus Deayton: "It's not as if you found me snorting coke or straddling my pimp"; "To you the world's just one big fucking naughty step isn't it?" Naturally she escapes the prison of home by falling out of the window and at the posh party she drunkenly kisses Jamie. Minutes later, they are dancing the blanket hornpipe on a leopardskin throw in someone's bedroom, while Jamie's girlfriend Beth attempts to crawl out the door.

Weeks later, along with her A-levels, Laura gets another result: she's pregnant. She has no recollection of her inamorata, only a phone number. When they arrange to meet in a café, she makes for the promising-looking chap sitting by himself, but gets it wrong: the father of her child is the geeky kid at the other table. Oh, no! He's 16, she's 18 - an unbridgeable gap - she has a croissant in the microwave and their young lives are blighted for ever. Or are they?

Chris Reddy dreamt up Pramface and wrote the script, directed by Daniel Zeff. It has nice touches: when Laura rings the number scrawled on a note, to say, "We slept together and now I'm pregnant", she dials the wrong number and her voice is beamed to the phone-speaker of a car driven by a startled bourgeois with his family. But it's all so derivative. Do we need any more jerking-off jokes, orgasm faces, drunk-girl pratfalls? There's a deal too much Americana here too: the plot's straight from Knocked Up; the party scenes of interchangeable babes owe a lot to Beverly Hills 90210; Laura's taut family supper echoes American Beauty. Lacking the rude conviction of The Inbetweeners, it comes over as The Hand-Me-Downers.