Once the middle classes were obsessed with cars, cats or gardens. These days, it's kids. Car seats? Baby on Board? Is this the nation that produced Stirling Moss?

I expected to hate Outnumbered, but was pleasantly surprised. This family sitcom is deliberately underdone with mundane settings and a loose improvisational style. And the humour is mild and wry rather than savage or out there.

Admittedly, it'd happily watch even Big Brother if Claire Skinner were involved. But Hugh Dennis is nicely lugubrious and the writing (Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton's first collaboration since Drop The Dead Donkey) is typically skilled.

Even the fact that one of the child actors is called Tyger Drew-Honey didn't put me off. Not much, anyway.

Depending how cynical you are, now is either the perfect time for political satire or a deliciously dangerous one. This topical sitcom by Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis is about a backbench MP (played by James Fleet) who's utterly at a loss in the backstage machinations of Westminster and now finds himself challenged in his constituency by a rising female Tory star.

There's good news for fans of Outnumbered. The unconventional family sitcom - which uses some improvisation - will be returning for a second series on BBC One at the end of September.

Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner work well together as the hard-pressed parents of three small children. The kids themselves - Jake (Tyger Drew-Honey), Ben (Daniel Roche) and Karen (Ramona Marquez) - are terrific.

Written by Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton (who created Drop the Dead Donkey), the improvisational sections work surprisingly well, especially the off-the-cuff lines delivered by the kids. The lines are so good that at times Dennis and Skinner have to suppress their own wry smiles. In addition, Dennis is a gifted comedian who can also improvise, so it's a winning combination all-round.

The series became quite essential viewing last September, despite the BBC's bizarre idea of stripping it in two bunches of three consecutive episodes across a fortnight. This sort of show works much better with a more conventional regular weekly spot. Let's hope the BBC gets the scheduling right for the new series.

This deliriously enjoyable family sitcom had the funniest scenes ever between grown-ups and small children. Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner shone as the careworn parents but it was the child actors who were a revelation.

Delighted to say that Mock the Week is back on Thursday!

For newcomers - it's a sort of Have I Got News For You mixed with Whose Line Is It Anyway?, recorded in front of a studio audience the same day, and features the crushingly funny Frankie Boyle and Andy Parsons along with various others, including regular captain Hugh Dennis.

As the red-hot debate on how London-centric and middle-class Radio 4 is (or is not) continues to rage, one of the shows at the heat of the fire returns for its 25th series. Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis's takes on the week's news are the best in current satirical shows for thousands, but the work of 'self-satisfied, self-appointed, elite, liberal London tosspots' according to one dissatisfied listener. I really don't understand what all the fuss is about. If you haven't laughed after the first five minutes, then switch off and wait for he Archers.

Outnumbered came to BBC One with very little fanfare. There were a few adverts, but it was stuck on at 10.35pm after the News, and shown on consecutive nights over two weeks. Which is unusual to say the least, and I've no doubt that some people missed some episodes if they thought it was a weekly programme.

Yes, quiet and unassuming it may have been, but it was gorgeous. Following a middle-class family in the midst of several crises, Outnumbered proved so special because of the actors' improvisation. To be precise, it was the children who improvised around the adult actors' script, and the result was magical. Five year old Ramona Marquez played the youngest child and is a complete genius - you could see that Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner's reactions to some of the more surreal things she came out with were entirely genuine. The other children, played by Tyger Drew-Honey and Daniel Roche, couldn't be quite so off the wall, and therefore probably actually had to work harder, and were both wonderful.

A more inane panel game you are unlikely to find - unless you catch the dire News Knight on ITV1, and I'd advise catching hepatitis instead - Mock the Week is a show you don't even laugh at contemptuously.

Rather, as Dara O'Briain, Hugh Dennis, Frankie Boyle, Andy Parsons and Russell Howard wade through it, as if through thigh-high excrement, it's a show to sit slack-jawed in front of, awestruck at its dearth of humour, charm and originality. Still, at least Ben Elton isn't in it.