Yet another school-based sitcom, but this time the parents (Joanna Page and Tom Ellis) are the butt of the jokes. On the first day of school they're much more nervous than their daughter, knowing they must run the gauntlet of the school gates where predators prowl eager to ensnare them in endless coffee mornings, after-school activities and play-dates.

Before you can say "How do you do?" the new dad is fleeing from a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Aussie and a lonely housewife. Best of all is Sue Johnston as a hungover teacher who couldn't care less about the headmaster's harebrained schemes. Survivors of the school run will soon be chuckling in sympathy.

A good first day of term for this new school-set sitcom, the second to launch tonight alongside BBC3's Bad Education. Gates is a more family-friendly affair, following Joanna Page and Tom Ellis as they - and their far more mature daughter - negotiate the primary-school run in a new town where minding their own business proves impossible. Well cast and showcasing a gentler sort of observational humour, Gates proves that Sky 'gets' sitcoms even if they haven't yet mastered the comedy-drama.

Given school's out for summer, this is an odd time to schedule a sitcom set around the playground politics of the school gates. Still, parents will recognise the foibles of the accidental relationships formed by circumstance and childhood alliances. Joanna Page and Miranda hunk Tom Ellis star as parents whose daughter is starting a new school.

A promising start for a new comedy set around the daily drop-off and pick-up point at a primary school - a minefield of social politics. Mark (Tom Ellis) and Helen (Gavin & Stacey star Joanna Page) and their daughter Chloe (Mari Ann Bull) are new to the area and Helen warns Mark not to get involved with the other parents; "these gates are a jungle," she warns. But an unexperienced Mark proves defenceless as he is lured into hosting a post-school party and giving a presentation to the pupils. Sue Johnston shines as a swinging, single older teacher.

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Joanna Page stars with Tom Ellis as parents Helen and Mark. The pair desperately try to avoid getting mixed up with the other parents, and their after school activities, when they move to a new area, and their daughter starts a new school.

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