We've noted Rafe Spall's appalling track record with family pets before now, so it should come as no surprise when Pete opens the batting tonight by running over a moggy called Monty.

But is he going to let a little detail like that stop him from copping off with Monty's pretty female owner, Mel? Of course not.

Pete's massive lie this week involves pretending to be a military hero. That's a hard trick to pull off, but the most convincing acting on screen this week is actually from a dog called Gary.

Gary is the only one who knows what really happened to Monty and if looks could kill, Pete would be dog-food.

As our favourite commentators Colin and Terry explain, it's rare for a dog and cat to be friends, "but they found enough common ground in their dislike of birds to make the relationship work."

Craven Pete, professional disaster and romantic failure, runs over a woman's cat, which gives him the perfect opportunity to try to get off with the grieving pet-owner.

This, like every single one of Pete's potential assignations, could bomb horribly when it comes to laughs, but Rafe Spall is so endearing as pin-brained Pete (he's a halfwit, but he's not malicious) that it just works.

It's a delight, too, to know that everything will always go badly wrong, despite Pete's best efforts and Olympian lies.

Work is so thin on the ground for journalist Pete (Rafe Spall) in the third episode of this run of the clever sports sitcom that he's working in a chicken packing factory. But then a newspaper accepts his article criticising Lottie Beaumont, Britain's seventh best tennis player - the problem is she's his girlfriend.

Pete (Rafe Spall) has yet to open his score-sheet, while Life is about to thump another ­hat-trick in the back of the net.

This week, Chloe, his ex-­girlfriend from season one, (the one whose family are all into saving the planet) has decided she wants to get back with him - just as Pete's dad turns up with his suitcase after a tiff with his wife.

Pete's goal in life is breathtakingly simple.

All he wants is to have sex whenever possible, but his habit of saying the worst possible thing to the most ­inappropriate person at the wrong time gets in the way. Like Pete himself, this ­­sitcom is silly, crude and ­unsophisticated, but hard to dislike and even his whiny, whimpering, snivelly voice kind of grows on you.

The clever bits are the ­incidental on-screen ­stats, where we learn, for example, that Chloe's dad once ­resuscitated Pete Doherty.

It's hard not to like this, and believe me I've tried. But Rafe Spall is great at the whimpering, socially inept halfwit whose every action is fodder for a couple of sports commentators.

Tonight, Pete's dad (the great Philip Jackson) fetches up at Pete's house, saying he's left Pete's mum. Nothing of what follows is subtle, but it has just enough charm to keep you watching. There are some good asides about rip-off local shops and their paranoid owners and an unkind dig at Mick Hucknall.

I'm not sure about Rafe Spall. There's surprisingly little ­difference between the way he plays shallow, self-interested, pathological liar Pete to the way he played the psychotic Jay Wratten in The Shadow Line.

So you might be a little concerned tonight as series two starts with Pete applying for a job as a dog walker.

After the cat-drowning incident in The Shadow Line, Spall's track record with pets is nothing to write home about.

It's not clear what's ­actually become of Pete's ambitions of being a sports journalist, but all that matters is that Colin and Terry are still on board to analyse his every move.

This week they're in the commentary box as Pete clumsily tackles his parents' new cleaner - a Polish art student who's not quite the heavenly Catholic girl that Pete's mum fondly imagines her to be.

This lightweight slacker comedy seems a world away from quality thriller The Shadow Line, in which Rafe Spall proved his acting chops as a psychopath. Still, it's a worthwhile watch and for the opening episode of this second series we have Spall's struggling sports journalist, Pete, crash from one ludicrous scenario to another as he tries to impress a Polish cleaner, while commentators Colin and Terry provide accompanying analysis and stats.

This laddish comedy starring Rafe Spall as hapless, struggling sports journalist Pete is back for a second series. It's improved. We're still bombarded by half-baked satirical commentary from the two boorish pundits who follow his every move. The rest of the script, however, is sharper and Spall's natural charm wins out over Pete's stupidity. In tonight's episode, Pete undertakes a disastrous stint as a dog walker. He also falls for foxy party girl Gracja (Jaleh Alp) - hired by his injured Mum (Sorcha Cusack) to help around the house.

With its rather awkward device of a sports anchorman and ex-footballer providing a running commentary on the life of sports journo and man-child Pete Griffiths (Rafe Spall), eyebrows were raised by some when this was commissioned for a second series. However, while it could still do without the sidebars and graphics that pop up, this is actually funny, and much of that is due to Spall. Here, he has to eke out a supplementary living as a dog walker, with fatal consequences, while romance possibly beckons with his parents' new Polish home help, the "good Catholic girl" Gracja.

This sitcom came and went without much fuss in the summer. But even if you were put off by the gimmicky premise (two sports announcers give a running analysis on a young man's life) or the fact that star Rafe Spall looks like Olly Murs, it's worth investigating. Spall is likable as the bumbling titular twentysomething and the episodes all have good momentum - there are only five, so you can whip through the whole series and still have plenty of time left to visit those relatives you don't really care about.