Pramface

The penultimate episode of the amusing comedy drama about two teenagers who meet at a party and find out that 18 year-old Laura (Scarlett Alice Johnson) is pregnant. With three months until the birth, Laura is still living at Jamie's (Sean Michael Verey) house and his parents are keen for her to move back home. Meanwhile, Laura's parents Alan (Angus Deayton) and Janet decide to make a go of their marriage and plan a weekend break away.

Pramface: It's all about location location location

Bare bottoms, a giant turkey costume and farmers' market - three things that spring to mind when Pramface star Dylan Edwards is asked about his time filming the new BBC Three series in the Capital.

Pramface: A blossoming bromance

"The meeting is on Wednesday. They want you to read for the part of Keith. I'll email you the details over now," chirped the chirpy voice of my agent.

Chris Reddy's delightful comedy revolves around Laura (Scarlett Alice Johnson) trying to cope with becoming pregnant after a one night stand with 16-year-old Jamie (Sean Michael Verey). As Laura heads off to Edinburgh University, she believes that she can put her "situation" to one side - but is followed by Jamie.

The slow-burning comedy burns even slower. So slow, in fact, that it seems to be missing the comedy. Jamie hasn't heard from Laura, who's now 12 weeks pregnant and settling into university, so he decides to stalk her. He's clumsily aided by sidekick Mike, whose clown-like antics might raise the chances of a smirk. Earnest best friend Beth is still scheming to win Jamie's heart, but a night of disco bowling fails to ignite romance.

Pramface may be cult favourite or mainstream crossover

Pramface continues to be a surprisingly clever, polished and compelling offering from BBC3 that could well become a mainstream hit in time.

Another charming episode proves last week's opening part of this new comedy wasn't a one-off. Newly pregnant Laura (Scarlett Alice Johnson) is still grappling with the full consequences of her one-night stand with 16-year-old Jamie (Sean Michael Verey) when her parents (Angus Deayton and Anna Chancellor) find out - in less than ideal circumstances.

Pramface, a sitcom about a 16-year-old boy who accidentally gets a girl pregnant, is one of a series of new comedies recently commissioned by BBC Three, having axed most of their old shows. All I can say is that I hope the rest of the new output is better than this.

To give you an idea of where I stand on it, I laughed once. The laugh itself came from a somewhat old-hack gag about a boy "pleasuring himself" and "reaching climax" as his mother enters the room.

Nothing original to it, apart from the fact he was listening to a sex audio tape of his own devising, which was set to play the theme from Top Gear at the critical moment. Now, when I wrote about comedy in Top Gear last week, that's not quiet how I envisioned it. Still it's better than seeing one of those three presenters doing that act (and I apologise for putting that rather disturbing image into your head right now).

There were several problems with Pramface for me. I didn't like most of the characters; there was too much incidental music for my liking; and in terms of the gross-out comedy it appears to be going for I've seen much funnier examples elsewhere. Give me Robert Webb in Peep Show eating a half-cooked dog leg any day of the week.

The attractiveness of the British teenager may be as hard to detect as the Higgs boson particle, but it doesn't stop TV producers from putting more and more of them before the cameras for our inspection. Following the success of Skins and The Inbetweeners comes Pramface, a comedy of virginity, sex and pregnancy (yes, in that order) among the GCSE-sitting classes, and the discomfiture of their parents.

Sweet-faced but lecherous Jamie (Sean Michael Verey) and his conceited babe-magnet friend Mike (Dylan Edwards) are 16, have just finished their exams and are anxious to crash a party thrown by cooler and more grown-up schoolkids. "There may be scenes of a sexual nature," confides Mike, who wears green shirts with Harry Hill collars, sprays Lynx in his underpants and has made a shag-along soundtrack on his iPhone that ends with the theme to Top Gear. Elsewhere, pretty, 18-year-old A-leveller Laura (Scarlett Alice Johnson) has been grounded for smoking dope. She has a turn of phrase that shocks her anxious parents, Anna Chancellor and Angus Deayton: "It's not as if you found me snorting coke or straddling my pimp"; "To you the world's just one big fucking naughty step isn't it?" Naturally she escapes the prison of home by falling out of the window and at the posh party she drunkenly kisses Jamie. Minutes later, they are dancing the blanket hornpipe on a leopardskin throw in someone's bedroom, while Jamie's girlfriend Beth attempts to crawl out the door.

Weeks later, along with her A-levels, Laura gets another result: she's pregnant. She has no recollection of her inamorata, only a phone number. When they arrange to meet in a café, she makes for the promising-looking chap sitting by himself, but gets it wrong: the father of her child is the geeky kid at the other table. Oh, no! He's 16, she's 18 - an unbridgeable gap - she has a croissant in the microwave and their young lives are blighted for ever. Or are they?

Chris Reddy dreamt up Pramface and wrote the script, directed by Daniel Zeff. It has nice touches: when Laura rings the number scrawled on a note, to say, "We slept together and now I'm pregnant", she dials the wrong number and her voice is beamed to the phone-speaker of a car driven by a startled bourgeois with his family. But it's all so derivative. Do we need any more jerking-off jokes, orgasm faces, drunk-girl pratfalls? There's a deal too much Americana here too: the plot's straight from Knocked Up; the party scenes of interchangeable babes owe a lot to Beverly Hills 90210; Laura's taut family supper echoes American Beauty. Lacking the rude conviction of The Inbetweeners, it comes over as The Hand-Me-Downers.

Pramface review

Pramface was a classier affair than the usual trip served up by BBC3 and although it wasn't always laugh-out-loud funny, an impressive cast could see it run and run.