Life Of Riley centres around second time newly-weds Maddy and Jim, and the joining of their two families into a new dysfunctional whole.

The ever-optimistic Maddy suddenly finds herself at the head of a modern-day extended family made up of a complication of children, stepchildren, step siblings and half siblings - with a few ex-partners and in-laws thrown in.

In Life Of Riley, Maddy discovers that parenting has never been so complicated and she is outwitted at every turn by people a quarter of her age.

The Weaver family next door must unfortunately cross paths with the Riley family frequently.

This comedy will be back for a second series early in 2010. Maddy is still trying to be all things to all people within her complicated, extended family circle of children, step-children, step-siblings and half-siblings - with a few ex-partners and in-laws thrown in for good measure.

Struggling to be a nurturing mother, caring wife and competent human being, she throws herself with gusto into the daily maelstrom that is modern-day family life, finding that parenting has never been more difficult or complicated - and that she's as valiantly ill-equipped as ever to deal with it.

Our Review: This is likely to go down in history as one of the worst sitcoms of 2009. To be fair to Life Of Riley, it wasn't actually all bad. There were some funny moments and good storylines in the later episodes - especially Episode 6, which featured some particularly well structured farce.

However, we're not going to defend this show too much - there was an awful lot wrong with it. The early episodes, particularly the first, were just terrible in every respect. We don't have space to list all the weaknesses here!

But despite all of that, the BBC decided to give the show another chance. We are "apprehensive", shall we say, at the prospect of a second run. Six episodes have been commissioned for broadcast early in 2010.