Outnumbered

The fourth episode of what has been an inconsistent third series of the sitcom following the travails of the Brockman family. Sue (Claire Skinner) is trying to prepare the house to show around potential buyers, at the same time as Pete (Hugh Dennis) gets ready for his colonoscopy while hung-over from a drunken night out. The children are up to their usual mischief, with Karen (Ramona Marquez) refusing to go to school and Ben (Daniel Roche) in trouble for playground antics. Though the show feels as if it's winding down as the children grow more knowing, on the form of this episode it remains more inventive than most of the competition.

Dad (Hugh Dennis) has woken up with a crippling hangover having being ambushed by bright green cocktails. His youngest son, Ben (Daniel Roche), is bitterly disappointed that he missed the sight of his father being sick. "Your face is all grey," he says, "like someone shaded you in with a pencil. You smell like the relief teacher who didn't last very long. The one with the shaky hand who kept bursting into tears for no reason." Because the day of Dad's hangover also happens to be Friday 13th, Karen (Ramona Marquez) is refusing to leave the house in case something bad happens and she is eaten by bears on the way to school. And to cap it all, this is the day that house hunters are coming round to view the house. Once again, Outnumbered provides half an hour of pure happiness.

It's Friday the 13th and superstitious Karen refuses to go to school in case something bad happens. She might, she insists, get mauled by a bear. Ben, meanwhile, asks his hungover father, "Dad, what's the point of living?" So just another day in their household. It's probably heresy to say so, but the series is starting to feel just that little bit predictable. But then complaining is churlish when it's given us Ramona Marquez (Karen), the best female comedian currently on the telly.

"Why is your face grey?" says Ben to his father, first thing in the morning, capturing the horror every parent experiences when faced with the combination of a child and a raging hangover. From then on all the best lines go to the borderline psychopathic nine-year-old, including the classic "What's the point of living?" This week the story revolves around trying to get the house in order before some prospective buyers come round . . . not easy when there is a pigeon wreaking havoc in the kitchen.

TV matters: Outnumbered

It can be tricky when fictional television characters watch TV, but Outnumbered manages to make it both believable and funny.

Once again Outnumbered provides half an hour of pure happiness. The episode begins with the two brothers at loggerheads. The younger one, Ben (Daniel Roche), has changed his brother's status on Facebook to "Jake is a transvestite", so Jake (Tyger Drew-Henry) responded by changing Ben's Facebook status to "Ben died on Tuesday". Meanwhile Dad (Hugh Dennis) struggles to explain to the children what a colonoscopy is ("Will we be able to watch it live on television?"), while Mum (Claire Skinner) makes a doomed attempt to try and explain to her 13-year-old son what is meant by the objectification of women. It's consistently funny, but best of all is the adult tennis match featuring Ben as a ball-boy and seven-year-old Karen (Ramona Marquez) as the referee.

There's a battle between the sexes raging, sparked by Karen's ambition to be an astronaut. Her tiny sexist brother, Ben, dismisses this out of hand on the grounds that "girls can't throw". This makes sense to him, even if it baffles everyone else. But the pair move on to safer territory when Pete lets slip that he has a hospital appointment for a colonoscopy. Karen is remorseless about how anything can photograph her dad's insides until Pete is forced to reveal the truth. Cue much speculation about "midget doctors". It's another painfully funny episode that's packed with zinging lines from the kids and acute observations about the tiny pitfalls of a generally happy suburban family life - like not writing engagements on the calendar, and how to deal with a pompous windbag neighbour (a great cameo from The Thick of It's Alex Macqueen).

Though it's perhaps not tickling quite as many funny bones as it once did, the semi-improvised sitcom is still compulsive viewing.

Having recently endured a colonoscopy in real life, Hugh Dennis must have thought he'd heard all possible jokes about bums and cameras. But Ramona and Ben dream up some more tonight when his character Pete is due to have the same procedure.

Tonight's theme - if this collection of non-sequiturs can claim a theme - is Why It's Wrong To Treat Women As Sex Objects Or Domestic Servants. But there's more comedy in the bit with Ramona re-enacting The Apprentice with her stuffed toys.

Speaking of TV, Jake and his dad have very different tastes as Pete moans about Making Of... shows. "TV shows are like pork pies," moans Pete. "They're fantastic but you don't want to know what goes in them." Which might explain why he now needs to have a camera shoved up his insides.

Passion is a word that's bandied about a lot on reality TV programmes. But I've never seen anyone so tirelessly dedicated to putting that passion into action as I have in this show.

I saw Hugh Dennis once, carrying an enormous backpack and walking down Regent Street a few days before Christmas. Actually, I had to check to see if there were cameras following him, so much like his Outnumbered character, flustered dad-of-three Pete, did he appear. I think he caught my gawping, because he pulled that face he does on Mock the Week - lip curled, eyebrow up, face deadpan - so I looked away. Still don't know if there were cameras.

I get the impression this happens a lot. Because, after all, Outnumbered is a lot like real life. It's not the script that does it - that's good, though, like any of these two point four children sitcoms, a little cheesy too. No, it's the children. They don't seem to be acting at all. Take last night, when they thought they'd won half a million pounds from Reader's Digest. "We can buy school and close it down!" yelled Ben. "We could save the polar bears!" yelled Karen. On and on they went with their shopping list. Were they making it up as they went along? That's what it looked like. It's a little frightening, really. Children, I mean. They're monstrous, aren't they? Monstrous but also quite funny, especially for those of us who don't have them for real. It's a form of war tourism: look how Karen makes her granny squirm with her questions about weight! Isn't it awful? Thank god I don't have one. Phew.