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More from the low-key sitcom that has me ignoring the jokes and simply trying to work out which character I hate the most. It's a tough call (even Rick's wife is annoyingly smug), but it has to be the odious co-writer Marty, who I get the feeling we're actually meant to side with.

A brilliantly funny sitcom starring deadpan comic Jack Dee as disillusioned stand-up comedian Rick Spleen.

Another dollop of sourpuss comedy, and this week, a revelation: Rick Spleen isn't Rick Spleen at all, it turns out. His real name is Rick Shaw, a pun that caused no end of amusement in his school days and which comedy partner Marty continues to enjoy, at Rick's expense, during their fractious writing sessions. It's a detail that may prove crucial, too, if Rick's hopes of appearing on a family tree series called Where Do You Come From? materialise. The pre-title sequence where Rick meets the show's producer Calvin is one of several lovely scenes, the best of which involves a priceless misunderstanding by Magda the home help, who's moved in with Rick's family. Then there's Michael, Rick's super-tense restaurateur friend. Michael has not taken well the news that his father is gay. Look out for a brilliant visual gag in the scene where Rick and Marty visit Michael's place to check he's OK: Curb Your Enthusiasm, this sitcom's spiritual parent, would be proud.

Jack Dee may be on of the writers, but it's clear he knows that successful sitcoms need a good ensemble cast. Which perhaps explains why Magda, his sullen Eastern European help, and Michael, the ultra-neurotic cafe owner, get all the best lines.

Although it's easy to understand why Jack Dee's surly sitcom has survived to a third series, you need an electron microscope to find the humour in it these days.

And now that Rick's daughter Sam (played by Antonia Campbell-Hughes) and boyfriend Ben (Rasmus Hardiker) have inexplicably stopped their weekly demands for money, the best bit of the show each week (apart from Magda, obviously) is turning out to be the pre-title sequence when we see Rick at work.

Beeb strikes comedy gold with semi-improvised sitcom

Well, after sparking a national outcry for allowing grown-ups to improvise on air, the Beeb has struck true comedy gold for the first time since The Office by giving their very youngest actors the freedom to stay and do the first thing that comes into their head.

Jack Dee and Pete Sinclair's bitter-hearted comedy enters its third season and seems to have found its feet. We return to find Magda, the wonderfully sullen Polish help, has moved in until her boiler is fixed.

I had forgotten just how wonderful this series is - albeit wonderful in a deadpan sort of a way. The director Lindsay Anderson said once that the key to success was in the casting, and that is certainly the case here. Tonight, Magda (Anna Crilly), the surly East European help, moves in with the family because 'boiler is leaking gas'. She partitions the fridge like the Berlin Wall and poisons the son with her carthorse sausages, while Mel (Raquel Cassidy) - the wife who usually manages to keep it all together - gets splendidly drunk. I laughed out loud, which woke up my mother-in-law and startled the dog.

Although the return of Jack Dee's grumpy comedian Rick Spleen is always welcome, the start of series three misses the bull's eye a bit tonight. Maybe it's because there's no sense of cause or effect.

Mildly irritating things happen to Spleen, of course, but what's missing is that delicious realisation that he's brought it all on himself. (See Fawlty Towers or Curb Your Enthusiasm for more information). If Spleen's predicament is simply that he's surrounded by idiots then he might as well be Ben Harper from My Family.

Jack Dee returns as angst-ridden comedian Rick Spleen in this third run of the entertaining series, which sees us discovering a whole lot more about his complicated world and the colourful people who inhabit it.

Rick's socially inept behaviour continues to land him in a whole heap of trouble as he just can't seem to see the world how everyone else does.