Jonathan Ross keeps the hecklers in check as he hosts the annual comedy gongfest. And while there are some glaring omissions from the shortlist - notably Grandma's House and Fresh Meat - there's still plenty of fine talent jostling for the top spots, with Olympic comedy Twenty Twelve slugging it out with political satire The Thick Of It for Best Sitcom gold. But if there's any justice in the comedy world, then David Rawle should be a shoo-in for Best Breakthrough Actor with his peerless performance as 11-year-old Martin in Chris O'Dowd's Moone Boy.

All too soon this gem comes to an end. Based by Chris O'Dowd on his memories of an Irish smalltown childhood, the star is David Rawle as 11-year-old Martin Moone. What gives the drama its heart is his pairing with O'Dowd as imaginary friend Sean, less an escape mechanism, more a cheery counterpoint to Martin's dysfunctional life.

Sky1's new comedy Moone Boy is now officially the funniest thing to come out of Ireland since Roy Keane's unconcealable disdain for Adrian Chiles's chummy banter. And having the Sultans Of Ping FC's Where's Me Jumper for its theme is surely the finest use of music since Tony Soprano bowed out to Don't Stop Believin'.

But it's a bit harsh that some people are calling Moone Boy Ireland's way of saying sorry for Mrs Brown's Boys. Mrs B might be crass and smutty but her show does what it does brilliantly. And BBC1's prime-time repeats are still beating allcomers on a Friday.

As for Moone Boy I have a couple of apologies. One, I didn't praise young David Rawle nearly enough for his amazing breakthrough performance as Martin Moone. And two, I failed to clock the name of the hairdressing salon until well into episode two. Scissors Palace. Sure, that's just lovely work.

Many men of a certain age will fondly remember the frisson provided by Argentine tennis player Gabriela Sabatini. She's here tonight as this charming comedy-drama continues and Martin (the excellent David Rawle) starts 'flying the fleshy flag' during afternoons spent slumped in front of Wimbledon. Elsewhere, the return of cool Uncle Danny from a tour of duty as The Edge's plectrum roadie casts the house into turmoil; Liam's jealous while Martin is sufficiently spellbound to disown Sean. Cue a wonderfully inventive little scene in which Sean drowns his sorrows - alongside a wrestler and a cowboy - in a pub for rejected imaginary friends. It's a perfect encapsulation of a series that continues to be disarmingly sweet but never remotely sickly.

Chris O'Dowd's comic re-imagining of his childhood in Ireland sees Martin (David Rawle) ditch his imaginary friend Sean (O'Dowd) when Uncle Danny (Steve Wall) pays a visit to the family home. Danny is the cool one in the family - he is a musician who has busked around Europe and once worked with U2 - and it's he Martin turns to for advice on dealing with the opposite sex. The ostracised Sean, meanwhile, consoles himself by hanging out with some of Martin's other forgotten imaginary friends, including Crunchy Danger Haystacks (Johnny Vegas).

Martin (David Rawle) wakes up, doesn't bother to wash his face and thus fails to avoid falling victim to one of his sister Sinead's pranks. A prank that leaves him wandering into school caked in more make-up than Widow Twankey. What to do? Why, break down the wall at the back of his house to shorten his commute, and thus allow more face-washing time in his morning routine. Naturally - after all the Berlin Wall happens to be coming down at the same time. There's a gentle sense of whimsy to this third episode of Chris O'Dowd's sitcom, which means that, while it's not exactly packed with belly laughs, it's nonetheless a sweet, enjoyable way to while away half an hour. Then again, it's hard to go wrong when your lead character is such a cherubic little kid.

Martin Paul Kenny Dalglish Moone is the most life-affirming delight to have hit our screens in a long time. Played with gap-toothed genius by young David Rawle - actually he doesn't have a gap-tooth but the charm of the writing somehow makes you think he does - he's the amalgam of every well-intentioned, bright, troubled 12-year-old you might have been lucky enough to meet, and somehow manages to span every shade of the above category, from Thomas Turgoose's darker character in the Shane Meadows things, via every Roddy Doyle 12-year-old, ever, to Nicholas Hoult's Marcus in the more glucose-rich About a Boy.

Which is possibly to imbue Rawle's success with heavier pretensions than the writing would ever affect: Moone Boy is, essentially, a piece of fun. But what fun. Written by Chris O'Dowd and Nick Vincent Murphy, it's the tale of Martin Moone growing up in Boyle, County Roscommon, in the teeth of 1989 - we're told this by the scrolling title in the first scene, along with the nugget: "Chance of rain, weirdly low." So far, in Boyle, so Doyle, and this is not so much of a bad thing, as Martin copes with bullies, his mother's feminism, his sister's bras, broccoli boiled until it turns white, and the like, though it has (so far) stopped short of a horse in a lift. Where this is lifted superbly is in the appearance of Martin's thirtysomething be-beanied "imaginary friend", played by O'Dowd, who appears as a one-man Greek chorus, with banjo, to offer Martin the worst advice imaginable at every turn; and the occasional animations as we are taken inside Martin's head and reminded of the vaulting imagination you're stuck with by virtue of being 12 and clever.

It is surreal, within decent limits, and it is derivative, but I think the derivations are happily if tacitly acknowledged; musically, certainly so, as we get stings from Grange Hill, Mission: Impossible, Raindrops Keep Fallin', etc. There are grand twists, such as the disenfranchised, underemployed menfolk - including Martin's lovely dad Liam and the bullying twins' father - meeting up for ostensible poker schools or fishing trips (none of them own fishing rods, or even a pack of cards) but instead to drink and moan, with their damp-eyed remnants of manliness, about the impossibility of all their children. If the opening two episodes, also featuring a forgivably OTT cameo from Steve Coogan, are representative, there's a granite-solid winner here, sculpted with charm, knowingness and a canny ability to lift from tradition while delivering fresh unpredicatability at every turn. Sky has been waiting for a return on its huge investments in new comedy; and of course Ireland has been waiting too long for anything to even approach Father Ted: early days, but I think that if these are boxes which needed ticking, and the boxes could somehow be painted glass panels awaiting some pebbles from a cheeky 12-year-old, then what we're hearing here is the happy sound of breaking glass.

There are cartoonish capers in this new series, Moone Boy. It's also co-written by its star, Chris O'Dowd - formerly best known for The IT Crowd, now popping up in Hollywood movies all over the shop. Moone Boy is based on his upbringing in a small Irish town, but this ain't exactly a misery memoir. O'Dowd plays the imaginary friend of Martin Moone (David Rawle), a 12-year-old living in Boyle in 1987, and what japes they have! Moone Boy is as bright and uncool as the pair's matching red bobble hats, as upbeat and mildly irritating as its theme music, Sultans of Ping FC's "Where's Me Jumper?".

The plot is slight; Martin is bullied by the Bonner brothers, so he seeks protection from a bigger bully, who agrees - in exchange for a feel of Martin's sister's boobs. What's odd, though, is that O'Dowd's character isn't really used for anything - he seems to be there mostly to provide voiceover, and to play banjo to block out the swearwords when Martin's sister goes on a foul-mouthed rant. It's one of many elements that make it feel like children's programming, the final slot on the CBBC schedule; with jaunty animated sequences and rapid editing, Moone Boy is a bit Beano. Presumably meant to be nostalgic, sweet entertainment for adults, it's perhaps too successful at inhabiting the kidult mindframe.

Malcolm Tucker may have been back in The Thick Of It on BBC2 last night, but the comedy highlight of the week was Sky1's new Friday night delight Moone Boy.

It's a warm, nostalgic Irish tale starring Chris O'Dowd as Sean Murphy, the imaginary friend of 11-year-old Martin Moone, who is brilliantly played by David Rawle.

But guest star Steve Coogan stole the show early as Francie Feeley, a rich, loud-mouthed, hard-drinking big shot with a reputation for being rather too friendly with the local ladies. Hardly much of a stretch for Coogan, you might say, given his own past. But hey, those Irish accents can be quite tricky to pull off sometimes.

You'd never guess that IT Crowd actor Chris O'Dowd was now hobnobbing with the likes of Judd Apatow and Jack Black judging by this charming little comedy based on his inauspicious upbringing in late 1980s/early 1990 Ireland. It was born from the Little Cracker short that O'Dowd wrote for Sky1 in 2010 and sees him play the imaginary friend of 12-year-old Martin Moone (David Rawle), a boy who spends his days drawing, formulating crackpot schemes and generally trying to negotiate life with his scatty family.