Carrie & Barry

Autumn means sitcoms - presumably with the intention that we can laugh ourselves warm, and only have to put the heating on for Newsnight. Alas, Carrie and Barry (BBC One, Saturday), back for an inexplicable second series, would leave most viewers in the first stages of mild hypothermia.

Don't worry if you weren't impressed with the sleepy first run of Simon Nye's domestic comedy. This second series has a much more confident vibe to it. Kicking off with an episode that sees taxi driver Barry (Neil Morrissey) caught for speeding and his missus Carrie (Clare Rushbrook) trying to trace her family tree, there are more laughs in the first 10 minutes than Ben Elton's Blessed has so far managed in two episodes.

Despite the gentle, cosy set-up, this is everything a good sitcom should be - sufficiently grounded to be recognisable, but never afraid to spiral into gleeful bouts of clever one-liners and nifty slapstick when the occasion demands it. There's none of the desperation to force laughs that scuppers the likes of My Family, just a charming, laidback assurance that if the characters and dialogue are good enough, the chortles will come.

And come they do. Barry taunting a hungover Carrie with gives about female binge drinking, Kirk (Mark Williams) explaining about his Gran's holiday to Malmo (She hasn't seen that many blonde people since she flirted with the Hitler Youth in her twenties), Michelle (Michelle Gomez) experimenting with fake breasts and a genius sequence with a sarcastic traffic cop are just the highlights of a mainstream comedy wasted in the limbo of Saturday night.

From the writer of Men Behaving Badly, Simon Nye, and starring the Man Behaving Badly Neil Morrissey, Carrie and Barry essentially poses the question: "What if, instead of going out with the disapproving Leslie Ash, Neil Morrissey played a character married to someone just like Martin Clunes - but a woman!?!"

I hate to think how Carrie and Barry would get on without their loopy friends as foil; the excellent Mark Williams and Michelle Gomez as Kirk and Michelle respectively.