Him & Her

Not many shows could get us to sympathise with a couple who don't want to go to a party for a little boy who's just left hospital after having leukaemia. Steve doesn't want to go because it's fancy dress. All the pair have got to do is get dressed and warm up some supermarket sausage rolls. Unsurprisingly, even that's beyond them. A great, well-observed sitcom.

Week three of this likeable comedy and it's still debatable whether Steve and Becky's reluctance to leave the squalor of their rank one-bed flat is actually a lifestyle choice or merely reflects BBC3's penny-pinching love affair with sitcoms that can be shot on a single set (Ideal, The Smoking Room, etc).

This week our grubby, loved-up slackers (perfectly matched Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani) are getting ready to go to a fancy-dress party where you have to go as something beginning with P.

But there are so many more things they'd rather be doing instead - like squeezing their spots, discussing Candle In The Wind at length and sharing the secrets of the Fringe Wash.

For the full interactive experience, best watch this in bed, eating buttered toast.

I was going to review the first episode of this new comedy last week, but received the wrong DVD, so my panegyric has had to wait: it's beautifully acted (especially by Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani in the lead roles), wonderfully written (by Stefan Golaszewski), and intermittently very funny indeed. Last night, Steve refused to go to the pub to celebrate his 24th birthday, citing a nasty dose of flu when in fact he just wanted to stay at home watching porn. That was pretty much all that happened, but it happened exquisitely.

It's tempting for critics to look for the antecedents of new comedy, which is probably very annoying for those who conceive and write it. But here goes anyway. Him & Her seems to owe something to The Royle Family, in that, within the most mundane domestic setting, it gets its laughs from character rather than situation, powered of course by a terrific script. Also in common with the Royles, Steve and Becky are themselves telly addicts, working their way through the Morse box set. Those little references by television to television can sometimes look glib and self-conscious, but here they work perfectly, and last night Morse came in handy in all kinds of ways, not least as a device to have Steve caught by Becky and their friends as he vigorously played with himself. It was enough to shake the ghost of John Thaw, but only with huge guffaws of laughter.

Him & Her 1.2 review

Episode 2 of this superbly skuzzy comedy often limped in the first half, but managed to pull itself together for a ribald climax that gave me a seriously hearty laugh as the credits rolled.

Review of Him and Her

Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani waste their time and ours in another smut-fest from BBC Three's "Comedy" department.

Stefan Golaszewski's touching new sitcom about what it's like to be young, in a close relationship and a bit slobbish continues. This time it's Steve's (Russell Tovey) birthday and all he wants is to be left in bed. Even a visit from his brooding mother (one of her gifts is a dressing gown with his name emblazoned on it) fails to make him feel better. Laura (Sarah Solemani) doesn't seem that convinced by his illness. Does Dan's password for a website hold the key to his malady?

Last week it was Steve (Russell Tovey) who was keen to cop off with girlfriend Becky (Sarah Solemani). This time Becky's happy to return the favour. "Shall we do more sex, then?" she asks; it is his birthday, after all. But Steve's playing a sickie - even visits from mum Janet, who has a typically prickly relationship with Becky, and an unlikely bevy of acquaintances fail to get him off the bed - and has something else in mind that he can enjoy all on his own...

All this leads up to a final grubby but funny gag that neatly ties up several disparate elements, and which writer Stefan Golaszewski must have enjoyed putting together. What do a Morse DVD, an inflatable armchair, handcream and headphones have in common?

It's Steve's birthday, but he's not feeling well, so his mum and friends have to visit him in his sickbed, even though that's getting in the way of his Inspector Morse watching. Stefan Golaszewski's script builds almost surreptitiously towards a filthy, but hilarious, final scene.

"You give great blow jobs," announces Steve to his girlfriend Becky, with the opening line of BBC3's new comedy Him & Her. There's nothing quite like setting out your stall.

Him And Her - terrible title, by the way - is a sort of 20-something slacker version of Roger And Val Have Just Got In, except that Steve and Becky never went out in the first place. The story is told in real time, with them slouching around their squalid one-bedroom flat never quite having a proper conversation, never quite having sex and never quite getting properly dressed. They also have on-screen bowel movements, which I believe is something of a first for a British sitcom.

The overall effect is sordid and depressing, albeit frequently alleviated by some very funny, smutty dialogue. Henry Miller meets Max Miller, as it were.

TV review: Him & Her

It's very British, very BBC3, but, with a script by Stefan Golaszewski (part of the sketch group Cowards), despite the crude references it would be inaccurate to class it alongside the shagging'n'farting obsessed likes of Two Pints Of Lager.