Outnumbered

For once, an eerie calm descends on the Brockman household as all three sprogs are out of the house at the same time. Suddenly, Pete and Sue get a glimpse of an empty nest life as they try to remember what they did before child rearing took over their lives. Pete: "We used to have sex in the afternoon." Sue: "Did we?" Meantime, Jake is hiding something (at least in Sue's estimation), Ben causes mayhem at adventure camp, and Karen is seriously impressed by a friend's abode: "It's much bigger than our house. And much cleaner." Expect Labrador-driven mayhem, too.

It's eerily quiet in the Brockman household. Karen's staying overnight with her fashion-mad friend Tanya, pretending to be the new Gok Wan; Ben's terrorising the other kids and their teacher at an activity camp; while Jake's out with his band mates, doing whatever teenage boys do. "It's not natural!" whimpers Sue, visualising how empty life will be when it's just her and Pete. Even the prospect that they could have sex during the day isn't helping.

Except that they're not completely alone. Archie is staying with them and although he doesn't argue or answer back or ask impossible questions as the kids do (after all, he is a dog), he's a bit of a comedy star, acting as a wonderfully doleful, four-legged straight man to Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner.

Pete (Hugh Dennis) and Sue (Claire Skinner) are left home alone when the Brockman children go their various ways for the weekend: Ben to an adventure camp where he takes pride in terrorising the teacher; Karen, who has written UGG on the side of her boots, to her fashion-mad friend Tanya's house; and Jake is out jamming with his bandmates. With all that spare time on their hands, the pair get a taste of what life will be like with an empty nest.

Little Karen gets the better of a charity mugger in tonight's episode that also sees Pete and the boys turning their hands to domestic chores while Karen and her mum enjoy some quality mother and daughter time together.

Karen is at that age where she's starting to take an interest in fashion and make-up, thanks to her friends' irritatingly well-groomed and glamorous mum, while Sue is at that age where she really can't be bothered with it at all.

Meanwhile, as Ben prepares dinner for the very first time in his life, you might be struck by how much he looks like a pint-sized Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

Needless to say, this similarity doesn't extend to his cooking.

Are Outnumbered's days numbered?

The new series suggests that Outnumbered's grip on realism is slipping. What was once sitcom vérité is slowly becoming My Family.

We're now into the fourth series of acclaimed BBC1 series and Outnumbered won't have lost its appeal, even if its semi-improvised element can present problems at time.

Tonight's rambling opening scene - which featured a pause-ridden conversation between the parents and kids in the kitchen - dragged on a bit, but to be honest, most viewers probably didn't care.
Outnumbered's audience is generally forgiving of its tiny flaws, since much of the joy of the series is simply in identifying with the family at its centre: viewers just can't get enough of those beleaguered parents and their wise-cracking kids.

And now that the children are older, there is more scope for the comedy as they become even more adept smart alecs, with even quicker comebacks for their long-suffering parents.

There is also more scope for the drama, as the children begin to confront problems faced by teenagers. In this episode, Ben discussed everything from unemployment to AIDS, while Karen sought advice on girly friendship issues.

As long as the Outnumbered writers can strike the right balance between the family's ad-libbing and the more scripted little gems of dialogue, this is a series that deserves to run and run.

"What the hell has happened in this toilet, it's like a urine tsunami," cries Sue (Claire Skinner), prompting tonight's male/female divide in the Brockman household. The girls hit the shops while the men are forced to tackle household chores. Ben (Daniel Roche) concocts a Heston Blumenthal-style dinner with dire consequences. Meanwhile Karen (Ramona Marquez) has her eye on a pair of leopard-print heels. Now in its fourth series, this acclaimed sitcom still has legs. But as the kids get older, their growing self-awareness strains the programme's naturalistic style.

An anthropologist of the future wanting to study the life of British children in the early 21st century would have a field day with Outnumbered, the sitcom beloved of the middle classes because it so precisely seems to reflect their lives.

In the opening episode of the fourth series, shown on Friday, daughter Karen is having a conversation with her mother, Sue, who has just started to work full-time. "It's a mum's duty to pick up her children from school," she opines.

When her mother points out that she herself might like to work when she grows up, her retort is swift: "See, you're getting aggressive. That's what happens to women who work like men. They start turning into men. They get hairy chests and they smash up town centres." Sue exclaims in exasperation, but Karen barely looks up from her colouring. "You're getting aggressive. You'll get hairy." As a mother who works full time and spends a lot of the rest of my life sitting around kitchen tables having remarkably similar chats with my offspring, the exchange made me rock both with laughter and recognition. It is this sense of shared experience that has made Outnumbered, written by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, but also partly improvised by its cast, such a success.

Whereas most television sitcoms, such as My Family, which preceded it on screen last week, rely on incident, plot and comic misunderstanding to raise a laugh, Outnumbered is always at its best when its characters are simply bumbling through the mundane business of their lives: the fight over the Wii controller, the cheese stuck in the toaster, the dinosaur melted in the microwave, the keys which vanish just as you are leaving home.

It is particularly sharp on the vagaries of modern language: this week's conversations about the use of the word "gay" could have been recorded in many homes as a generation of school children apply it in the new sense of "feeble" to the horror of their parents who have co-opted it (against the wishes of a previous generation) to mean homosexual. The glee of the children when their father described the Wii controller as a "nunchuck" - "you said you'd never say that, you said that it wasn't a real word" - was equally astute.

From the anthropological point of view, however, it is the way in which the children behave that is of most interest. The family depicted in Outnumbered is one where the children rule: their parents are hapless, helpless adjuncts to the kids' power. It is not only that the youngsters argue each and every point. It is that on many occasions - such as Karen's decision to attend her uncle's funeral - they get their own way against the wishes of their parents.

In this way, Outnumbered depicts the sea change in behaviour in which a generation brought up to be submissive to its parents, finds itself once again in thrall - but this time to its children. For all its humour, it is essentially true.

Now back for its fourth series, the main question concerning Outnumbered is, 'Is it still funny after all this time?' The answer would appear to be 'Yes' - mind you, the fact that the first episode went out after My Family probably helped.

Eldest son Jake (Tyger Drew-Honey) is getting into a stage of typical teenage stroppiness, rallying against other members of the family and their attitudes, such as his mother Sue's (Claire Skinner) views of gay stereotypes; troublesome Ben (Daniel Roche) is refusing to wear his Wii safety cord and is under the belief that Jeremy Clarkson is gay; and curious Karen (Ramona Marquez) has an idea for stopping people stealing mobile phones by using bubonic plague.

The parents also have their own trouble, with father Pete (Hugh Dennis) quitting his job as a history teacher over a point of principle (and seemingly his own stupidity) and now working as a supply teacher, meaning Sue is working full time - and Karen is not happy about that. Pete is also having trouble with a eulogy at the funeral of his late gay uncle, which Sue finds amousing.

Outnumbered is still one of the best sitcoms around as far as I'm concerned. The semi-improvisation with the children is a joy to watch, especially when it comes to Karen. Let's hope it continues to keep the pace up.

Outnumbered - review

The family in Outnumbered make me want to shout at the telly, says Sam Wollaston.