Gary Janetti is the writer and producer behind Vicious. He talks about the second series of his show here...

What sets Vicious apart from other sitcoms?

I think any kind of sitcom that you do in front of a studio audience is always most successful when it is the characters that you watch and identify with. The simpler, I think, the better.

Friends is as simple as you can get - a group of six friends. Will & Grace, a gay guy and his straight best friend. Ab Fab: about two best friends.

If you can find a new way to tell a story about friends that kind of creates a surrogate family - that is something that is exciting, and that's what this show is.

We have not seen a show before about a gay couple that have been together for 50 years, and then you bring in their best female friend and this young man upstairs and suddenly a family has been created.

I believe it is really relatable to people. You could be in a relationship with somebody for a year and recognise Freddie and Stuart in yourself. You don't have to have been in a relationship for 50 years, and you don't have to be gay to see things are familiar.

Why did you choose to write about a couple in their 70's?

We often see people of a certain age on television and films relegated to being a side bar to someone else's life, as if the 30 year old is so much more interesting, and the person who is a few decades over just has to comment on that.

I like flipping the idea that the young person is really intrigued by these older people and is drawn into their world and accepts them for who they are.

In Series 2, Ash has become so much more part of the family. He is their surrogate child but also a real friend and that is what I wanted.

We're not laughing at Freddie & Stuart as an audience, we are laughing with them, aren't we?

Yes, they are gay, so sometimes you do want to make gay jokes. That's the fun of it and we made a tonne of them [jokes] in Will & Grace.

But that's only part of who they are, like all three dimensional people.

Is there a change of pace for the second series?

We established who everybody is in the first series so we were expanding those characters, exploring them a little more and getting to know them perhaps a little more deeply than you did in Series 1.

I thought it was an opportunity to go bigger, have more fun, to open their world a little bit and at the same time to have some unexpected things happen.

There were moments that worked well in the first series so I expanded on them in the second.

So for example, when they went to a club in the first series, part of me was like, 'How will they be funny outside of their flat, will it dissipate their power, will that be as fun for us?' And then when it was so fun, I knew that for Series 2, I can take them to other places and have fun with them.

Will they ever get married?

It is definitely something that we talk about in Series 2.

For straight people, marriage is embedded in the culture from a young age, and whether you want to get married or not, you know it's something that is open to you.

I can't imagine being with somebody for 50 years and then being told, 'Oh, after all these years of being told you can't, you can now get married'. It's a really wonderful thing and I just think how beautiful that is.

When you see gay marriages, the first people to get married often at these times are these couples that have been together for decades, and it's incredibly moving.

But not everybody wants to do it, so that's a long way of saying, 'yes, we talk about it'.

Have you been pleased about the reception to the series in UK?

I have been. I think our audience has been wonderful, and the people and the fans of the show have been very vocal and very lovely.

I know obviously there were some people who didn't care for it... and there were lots that did.

I think that when there is something that is as bold and noisy as this show is, people are going to have strong opinions about that and I much prefer that. I'd hate them to just say 'It's cute, it's okay'.