Whenever he appears, playboy boss Douglas Reynholm threatens to take over this sitcom and make it his. Matt Berry's barnstorming performance as Douglas is entirely in tune with Graham Linehan's writing: it's daft but so confidently, riotously daft that you can't help wanting to know where it leads. If there's a drawback, it's that Linehan's ideas can be more brilliant than his plotting.

It's hard to think of an office-based comedy more different from The Office than this. Graham Linehan's absurdist sitcom feels nearer in spirit to The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin: off in a mad world of its own, yet uncomfortably familiar, even at its maddest. The IT Crowd even used to have its own 'CJ'-type figure in Denholm Reynholm, the overbearing boss of Reynholm Industries played by Chris Morris. Although Reynholm jumped out of a high window in the last series, his playboy son Douglas (Matt Berry) shows every sign of carrying on the family name (plundering the pension fund, putting flakes of gold in the drinking water, etc) and more or less takes over tonight's very funny opening episode. That leaves our IT-department trio of geeky Moss, lazy Roy and uptight Jen slightly overshadowed. But the sweet scene where Moss and Roy try some role-play to help Moss deal with park bullies just about makes up for it.

Returning for a third series, Graham Linehan's office-bound sitcom seems to have been given a much-needed reboot. The swipes of cruel humour have been toned down in favour of the flashes of absurdist comedy Linehan perfected in Father Ted and Black Books. It's a good move, enabling Linehan to make the most of his superb cast, including Chris O'Dowd, Katherine Parkinson, Matt Berry and Richard Ayoade.

Graham Linehan's always-enjoyable comedy returns for a third run, but as before, it still leaves me yearning for the vibrancy and wit of his Dylan Moran collaboration, Black Books. Still, I'll take what I can get (and compared to Clone, The IT Crowd looks like vintage Galton and Simpson). Roy, Moss and Jen are still stuck in the basement, attending to the IT needs of Reynholm Industries, while Douglas (Matt Berry) does his level best to run his father's company into the ground.