Outnumbered was good, too. The Brockmans were selling their house and last night they had the first viewers. Predictably, it didn't go too well; Pete woke up hopelessly hung over after a work do, and Karen refused to go to school, on the (not unreasonable) grounds that it was Friday 13th. Ben, meanwhile, was doing his best to charm the heavily pregnant viewee. "Our neighbour had a home birth," he told her. "There was so much blood they had to redecorate." Not that any of it mattered, in the end: a pigeon got trapped in the kitchen and put them off buying entirely. Something to do with birds bringing bad luck. Nice touch, that: having a superstition-themed episode on the night of the election.

Radio Times article: Outnumbered

Sitcoms about families tend to be teeth-strippingly awful, brain-achingly twee affairs - see My Family and the pitiful Life of Riley. But the brilliant Outnumbered has managed to usurp the whole genre.

The fourth episode of what has been an inconsistent third series of the sitcom following the travails of the Brockman family. Sue (Claire Skinner) is trying to prepare the house to show around potential buyers, at the same time as Pete (Hugh Dennis) gets ready for his colonoscopy while hung-over from a drunken night out. The children are up to their usual mischief, with Karen (Ramona Marquez) refusing to go to school and Ben (Daniel Roche) in trouble for playground antics. Though the show feels as if it's winding down as the children grow more knowing, on the form of this episode it remains more inventive than most of the competition.

Dad (Hugh Dennis) has woken up with a crippling hangover having being ambushed by bright green cocktails. His youngest son, Ben (Daniel Roche), is bitterly disappointed that he missed the sight of his father being sick. "Your face is all grey," he says, "like someone shaded you in with a pencil. You smell like the relief teacher who didn't last very long. The one with the shaky hand who kept bursting into tears for no reason." Because the day of Dad's hangover also happens to be Friday 13th, Karen (Ramona Marquez) is refusing to leave the house in case something bad happens and she is eaten by bears on the way to school. And to cap it all, this is the day that house hunters are coming round to view the house. Once again, Outnumbered provides half an hour of pure happiness.

It's Friday the 13th and superstitious Karen refuses to go to school in case something bad happens. She might, she insists, get mauled by a bear. Ben, meanwhile, asks his hungover father, "Dad, what's the point of living?" So just another day in their household. It's probably heresy to say so, but the series is starting to feel just that little bit predictable. But then complaining is churlish when it's given us Ramona Marquez (Karen), the best female comedian currently on the telly.

"Why is your face grey?" says Ben to his father, first thing in the morning, capturing the horror every parent experiences when faced with the combination of a child and a raging hangover. From then on all the best lines go to the borderline psychopathic nine-year-old, including the classic "What's the point of living?" This week the story revolves around trying to get the house in order before some prospective buyers come round . . . not easy when there is a pigeon wreaking havoc in the kitchen.

TV matters: Outnumbered

It can be tricky when fictional television characters watch TV, but Outnumbered manages to make it both believable and funny.

Once again Outnumbered provides half an hour of pure happiness. The episode begins with the two brothers at loggerheads. The younger one, Ben (Daniel Roche), has changed his brother's status on Facebook to "Jake is a transvestite", so Jake (Tyger Drew-Henry) responded by changing Ben's Facebook status to "Ben died on Tuesday". Meanwhile Dad (Hugh Dennis) struggles to explain to the children what a colonoscopy is ("Will we be able to watch it live on television?"), while Mum (Claire Skinner) makes a doomed attempt to try and explain to her 13-year-old son what is meant by the objectification of women. It's consistently funny, but best of all is the adult tennis match featuring Ben as a ball-boy and seven-year-old Karen (Ramona Marquez) as the referee.

There's a battle between the sexes raging, sparked by Karen's ambition to be an astronaut. Her tiny sexist brother, Ben, dismisses this out of hand on the grounds that "girls can't throw". This makes sense to him, even if it baffles everyone else. But the pair move on to safer territory when Pete lets slip that he has a hospital appointment for a colonoscopy. Karen is remorseless about how anything can photograph her dad's insides until Pete is forced to reveal the truth. Cue much speculation about "midget doctors". It's another painfully funny episode that's packed with zinging lines from the kids and acute observations about the tiny pitfalls of a generally happy suburban family life - like not writing engagements on the calendar, and how to deal with a pompous windbag neighbour (a great cameo from The Thick of It's Alex Macqueen).

Though it's perhaps not tickling quite as many funny bones as it once did, the semi-improvised sitcom is still compulsive viewing.