Some Girls

The third series of this comedy about a gobby group of schoolgirls draws to a close with the end of school prom. Amber (Alice Felgate) has been meticulously organising the foursome's plans for months, but her pals are stressed: Viva (Adelayo Adedayo) is lumbered with the task of making the event into a "tropical paradise" and Saz (Mandeep Dhillon) is fixated on taking a special someone along. Meanwhile, an ill-advised selfie derails Holli's plans to retrieve her mum's jewellery from the pawn shop.

One programme that outstayed its welcome almost as soon as it began was BBC3 sitcom Some Girls. Regular readers of the site will know that I've had a rocky relationship with the show since it first debuted back in 2012. Although I'd really like to see a sitcom that deals with the problems that modern teenage girls face, I've never felt that Some Girls is based in reality.

I'd even be willing to forgive it its lack of laughs and thinly-drawn characters if it had been brought to us by a first-time writer. But instead Some Girls is created by Bernadette Davis, who wrote Game On in the mid-1990s, and therefore has little knowledge of what life is like for teenagers in the 21st century.

The comic mishaps that befall our young heroines in this episode include one of them getting her hand stuck in a letter box and another believing that her sometime boyfriend had gone on witness protection.

Some Girls's saving grace was the central character of Viva (Adelayo Adedayo); a level-headed young woman who I feel was a fine example for teenage girls. But I feel that Davis has somewhat spoilt the character after she agreed to marry her dopey college dropout boyfriend. As we are now in series three, it's also getting harder and harder to believe that our quartet of female protagonists are still only eighteen.

I know that not many teenage characters on TV are actually portrayed by teenagers; but the lead actresses in Some Girls all look like they should at least be at university now rather than hanging round sixth form college. Thankfully, as the foursome are set to depart college in the near future, it looks like this will be the final series of Some Girls and I for one won't be mourning its departure.

Some Girls cast say they are 'just as funny as boys'

The Some Girls characters spend a lot of time in cafes, so it is fitting that Newsbeat meets them in a cafe too.

Returning for a third series, this sitcom follows a similar model to The Inbetweeners, charting the lives of four schoolfriends as they negotiate the idiocy and ignominy of their teenage years. There may be some decent jokes in this opener - which sees the girls break into an errant boyfriend's house to establish his whereabouts - but that's not to say it's anywhere near as funny as its male counterpart. Rather, it's more of an illustration of how difficult it is to make crude, farcical comedy that's realistic and relatable.

The sparky schoolmates sign off their second series of sharply observed comic adventures and there's a sense of growing up and growing apart in the air. For with Viva (Adelayo Adedayo) discovering it's possible to meet a boy who might actually understand her feelings and where she's coming from, the adult world is approaching fast.

Still, before things get too heavy, there's always time to gatecrash a party.

The second series of the teen comedy continues, striking the right balance of OTT laughs and true-to-life warmth. The girls are left to run their own football team when Viva's PE teacher stepmum goes on maternity leave, but with inept management from Saz and Holli, will the team's usual superstitious tricks, from munching Kit-Kats to wearing three bras, be enough to guarantee a win? Meanwhile, ditzy Amber finds herself falling for Brandon's charms once again when he needs a hand looking after his grandad.

A 16-year-old's view on Some Girls

South-London school comedy drama Some Girls doesn't fall into the Skins trap and manages to portray teenage life realistically, says 16-year-old Grace Berger.

It's more The Inbetweeners than Grange Hill, except these four potty-mouthed, sex-mad teenagers are female. They're also oddly endearing.

This week, Viva - our conscientious heroine - inadvertently catches the eye of the dishy head boy. No sooner has he batted his eyelashes at her than another gang of girls are flicking their long blonde locks and flexing their fake fingernails (they'd be cheerleaders if this were an American high school drama).

Worse is in store for Saz when bullies steal her journal and post her deepest, darkest gripes on the school noticeboard. Look out for Colin Salmon as Viva's even dishier dad.

The school-based sitcom playground is getting pretty crowded, with the bell just rung on Big School and Jack Whitehall's Bad Education still running around dropping its shorts at anyone who's interested. But for my money the pick of the Class of 2013 is Some Girls (BBC3), which scores one vital A* over the opposition: it looks as though it's set in a school that might actually exist.

On the face of it, the group of south London bffs at the heart of Some Girls is painfully PC: one sorted black girl, one ditzy white blonde, one brainy Asian and one baby Kathy Burke. So it's full credit to the spark in the writing of Bernadette Davies and a set of confident performances from the four leads that this formula adds up to more than the sum of its parts. It works.

Led from the front by Adelayo Adedayo as Viva, who was facing down the tricky issue of dumping a fit boyfriend who was too thick for her, last night's episode centred on the sudden death of a science teacher - cue the arrival of Broadchurch's Jonathan Bailey as unashamed lust object - and the fallout therein.

It was all dealt with delightfully distastefully, as voiced by the straight-talking Aussie gym teacher/resident hard-faced bitch: 'We'll provide a counsellor - if you can't talk it over with your mates like a normal person.'