Gimme Gimme Gimme: The Complete Third Series

Cross an effeminate, unemployed, desperate wannabe male thespian with a fat, ugly, foul mouthed, sex mad female couch tattie and you've got Jonathan Harvey's Gimme Gimme Gimme springing up to bite you where it hurts.

Cathy Burke and James Dreyfus are back in a third series, wildly slinging their mixed bag of ultra camp and slutty, slobbish humour around their wee London abode. As a newcomer to all this, six episodes in under 24 hours is a little bit much in the way of fat loud gingers and screaming queens, but there are some decent gags along the way.

The whole thing is based around the odd pair's completely diametric personalities. Linda (Burke) is the obese nympho with the specs. Tom (Dreyfus) is the gay counterpart, resisting her overactive libido on a daily basis, while simultaneously living in a fantasy world of luvviedom. Bouncing off and knocking each other out with their crude sexual double entendres, they are the most unlikely likely flatmates, both failures and both desperate for a man.

Every episode features a greedy helping of dark slapstick humour: in Secrets and Flies, Tom bites off Suze's umbilical chord, when delivering the baby; in Trauma, Linda finds out her brain is literally in her arse. "That's why it's so lumpy," retorts Tom. See, it's not really funny, when talked about.

Most of the humour revolves around daft people in daft circumstances. Once a week, this may tickle the chortle buds, but more than that, it's a no-no.

Although coming from the same slapstick school as early Rik Mayall, this would feel uncomfortable rubbing shoulders in such company. The Young Ones was premier league viewing; Gimme Gimme Gimme lies somewhere in the middle of the second division.

Both leads are well cast. Burke, once the female slob in The Harry Enfield Show, is tailor made for this role. She blows out of all proportion everything that was gross about her former incarnation, dressing it up in hideously colour-clashing wackiness.

If you were into the first two series, the chances are you'll be into this. The formula for fun seems pretty constant.