Outnumbered

Outnumbered success relies on the partly improvised dialogue derived from the interaction of the three children and their screen parents in various situations: in last week's episode, a trip round London with dad Pete's mother in tow. The youngest, Karen (Ramona Marquez), nine, is the star, her dialogue pursuing paths of childish logic to which Pete (Hugh Dennis) reacts with probably real bafflement. In previous series the adults had more of the screen; here they are pulled into the background more as feeds for the self-confident kids, no doubt ruminating on the phrase attributed to WC Fields, "Never act with children or animals".

Last night's TV: Outnumbered

I reckon the smartypants kids in Outnumbered need a good thrashing.

Outnumbered, BBC One, review

The award-laden family sitcom Outnumbered returns - but it's starting to look tired.

Few TV shows make me want to kick in the TV screen with quite the unfettered anger that Outnumbered manages to provoke.

Just two minutes in the company of those precocious brats and their pathetic parents really pushes the rage buttons: it's the televisual equivalent of guilt therapy for inadequate white middle-class types who turn themselves into human doormats the minute they pop one out. The problem is, Outnumbered gets showered with awards because it's those self-same inadequate white middleclass parents who are in charge of handing out the awards. But what gets lauded as cute just strikes me as contrived, an endless babble of knowing nonsense spouted by irritating kids who should have been told - long, long ago - to put a flaming lid on it.

The first in the latest series had jokes (if that's the word) about counting chavs, using disabled toilets - 'desperation is a temporary form of disability' - and confusing lesbian and Lebanese that were so lame they needed shooting and putting out of their misery. The whole thing was like one of those half-baked panel shows where all the off-the-cuff quips sound laboured and scripted. But just thinking about it makes me too angry to type any more. I blame the parents.

Last Night's TV - Outnumbered

I'd never watched Outnumbered before last night, and that's because when it first made its appearance on our screens, I thought "oh, another formulaic, cliched sitcom", so I didn't bother tuning in. But last night, for want of anything better to do, I did tune in, and it rapidly became obvious that I'd been spot on in my pre-emptive assumptions. It was formulaic and it was clichéd.

'Outnumbered' star wants drunk scenes

Outnumbered child star Tyger Drew-Honey has joked that he would like to film "drunk" scenes on the show.

In the opening episode of the third series of the British comedy about a typical middle-class family, cracks are beginning to show in the brilliance of the children's acting: frankly, it's too good. Karen has lines no seven-year-old would come out with, such as: "it's a Dad word, like tosser". That's an adult joke, made funny by getting a child to say it. Still, there's a lot that is recognisable about family life, as sulky pre-teen Jake battles with his dad, Ben declares war on the world, and too-clever-by-half Karen outwits her parents on a trip to London.

Series three of this engagingly downbeat family comedy kicks off as Pete and Sue Brockman - the two of them outnumbered by their three children - go sightseeing in London with Pete's mother. Competing tensions are as usual caught precisely as Jake, now 14, Ben, nine, and Karen, seven, each have very different ideas as to what makes for a good day out, and aren't shy of letting their parents know about it.

Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner play Pete and Sue but their thankless roles as parents in the comedy are mirrored in real life, because they more or less have to stand back and watch the children steal the show. Much of the dialogue is improvised and Karen (Ramona Marquez, who won Best Female Comedy Newcomer at last year's British Comedy Awards) comes up with most of the best lines, including a smart run-through of the dos and don'ts of political correctness. Perhaps these are topped, though, when Ben (Daniel Roche) gives a spot-on, if scatological, analysis of Gordon Brown's political prospects.

A few of the jokes - the confusion between lesbian and Lebanon, for example - are not in their first flush of youth, and the scene in which Dennis is left to clown around on his own is jarring, but otherwise this is a note-perfect sitcom capturing the gentle mundanity of middle-class family life in Britain today.

Hugh Dennis' character sends sex txts

Outnumbered dad Pete follows in the footsteps of Ashley Cole and Vernon Kay as he gets caught sending sex texts.

It's wonderful to have Outnumbered back on our screens for a third series. If you've only just returned from a shopping trip to Mars, it is based on the life and times of two besieged middle-class parents (Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner) who are doing their best to raise three precocious children. It follows a comic tradition that goes back to Joyce Grenfell, but the brilliance of the show is the accuracy of the children's dialogue and the naturalism of their performances. Because so much of it is improvised, it is inevitable that some episodes won't be as strong as others. But tonight's, in which all the family (including the grandmother) go on a day trip to London, is a delight. I was enjoying it so much that I forgot to take notes in order to steal the best jokes.