Simon Amstell

Rejoice and be glad. Not before time, Simon Amstell's exquisite domestic sitcom is back for a second series. (The first went out in 2010, for heaven's sake: the fictional Simon's fictional mother wouldn't stand for that sort of work rate.)

To jog your memory, the premise here is a young presenter/comedian (Amstell, more or less playing himself, à la Hancock, Seinfeld, etc) sparring with his suburban Jewish family - notably his overbearing mother and abrasive aunt. Episodes involve long, spiky arguments that Simon joins through permanently gritted teeth. Within minutes, this opener has delivered a cringe-making level of farce (courtesy of Simon's one-night stand), a hilarious take on Alan Yentob, and the throwaway line, "He got expelled from his last school for killing a frog on a sponsored walk." It's a cripplingly awkward joy.

Simon Amstell's brilliant, excruciating, quasi-autobiographical sitcom returns in fine fettle with our vulnerable hero being offered an acting job - and mum Tanya (Rebecca Front) responding with a shrill: 'You're not a failed nuffin' nobody any more - you're like a real-life Paula Abdul.' There's plenty of annoyances to offset the good news though: notably the permanently grumpy Auntie Liz (a fab Sam Spiro), Tanya's ex-lover, Clive, and Amstell's one-night stand, who forms the basis of some priceless scenes.

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As Simon Amstell's sitcom returns for a second series, Jay Richardson asks if British TV is ready to follow the US and have Jewish comedy move on from being just Jew-ish.

Simon Amstell's self-referential sitcom returns for a second six-part run. Tonight, the plots sees Amstell landing an acting role in a TV drama, giving rise to more jokes about him being a bad actor. Certainly, Amstell's uneasy, smirking presence shows up sharply against the bold comic performances of Rebecca Front and Linda Bassett as his mother and grandma. (Grandpa has been written out after actor Geoffrey Hutchings died last year.) But the premise of a squabbling family played for laughs generally works well.

The second series of Simon Amstell's meta comedy takes it up a notch by introducing a new fictional comedy show written by Simon, about his family. The farcical elements remain sharp, as Simon wakes up next to a man who insists on referring to him only as Simon Amstell, and the supporting cast is impeccable, particularly Samantha Spiro's angry aunt and Rebecca Front as Amstell's mother: "You're back on telly!" she beams. "I don't care if it's absolute shit."

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Simon Amstell's dysfunctional family sitcom, Grandma's House, returns for another run of gently serrated farce, in which the lapsed tormentor of pop buffoons plays an undisguised version of himself struggling to escape from his abrasive public image.

Last time he was trying to achieve something more meaningful with his life and craft - in reality, of course, he made Grandma's House - and as we reconvene he's finally been given a self-penned TV pilot. Which sounds a lot like Grandma's House. His proudly forthright Jewish mother - played by the great Rebecca Front - is naturally delighted, especially since Simon's career slump means he now lives in grandma's box room. "I can feel the shame lifting, can you?" she beams.

Like a more populous variation on Roger and Val Have Just Got In, each episode unfolds entirely within the titular abode, with the intensely self-aware Simon a perpetually mortified victim of his family's eccentricity. As before it's all very likeable, witty and controlled and Amstell has thankfully improved as an actor following a painfully self-conscious start during the first series. Indeed, they've developed his shortcomings into a running gag within the show itself - episode one is titled "The day Simon officially became a very good and totally employable actor."

The death of actor Geoffrey Hutchings, who played Simon's granddad in the first series, is deftly handled (you won't find overbearing schmaltz in this show), with his absence quietly underpinning an otherwise typically chucklesome episode in which our discomfited protagonist deals with the fall-out from a one night stand and fails to mend a possibly symbolic leak.

If I have a criticism it's that Samantha Spiro as Simon's embittered aunt is still too broad at times, although James Smith - coincidentally Front's co-star in The Thick Of It - continues to judge his performance perfectly as mum's hopeless ex-fiancée. Also, apropos motherly concern, a brief topless scene reveals that Amstell has the body of an emaciated alien. Eat, man, eat!

Simon Amstell's family sitcom divided critics when it first bowed in 2010, but we've always had a sneaking affection for Grandma's House. True, Amstell himself is not the greatest actor, but his dry wit and nervous energy remain appealing. In the Series 2 premiere, things become even more meta as Simon - having lost his presenting career and London flat - is set to star in a low-key TV sitcom... sound familiar?

What an intriguing, and unsettling little movie Black Pond (2011, Black Pond, 15) is. At the Baftas its makers (director Tom Kingsley, writer/director Will Sharpe and producer Sarah Brocklehurst) were nominated for an outstanding debut award, and there is plenty here to suggest that they are an ever-so-slightly surreal force to be reckoned with. The story of a family who unwittingly achieve tabloid notoriety as a killer clan, the film mixes faux documentary interviews with off-kilter (and carefully coloured) scenes from a waking dream of life, interspersed with animated legends of lost ladies of the lake and three-legged dogs. It's peculiar stuff, occasionally funny, often poignantly uncomfortable, and consistently weird, like some subdued English relative of David Lynch's American gothic oeuvre. Chris Langham and Amanda Hadingue provide a suitably awkward mainstay as the collapsing couple at the centre of the drama, although Simon Amstell appears occasionally to have wandered in from a different (and more overtly comedic) movie as a madcap phoney shrink taunting Sharpe's mockable Tim. Extras include deleted scenes and the Sharpe/Kingsley short film Cockroach.

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Simon Amstell's sitcom, Grandma's House, is back for a second series - and our confused reactions to it say a lot about the state of British comedy.