When hecklerspray do reviews, it’s usually of a national institution like the X Factor, The Apprentice or Nick Knowles Dusts The Natural History Museum. It’s very rare for us to see something on television and write about it unless it’s likely to spawn pseudo-celebrity targets for us. Why is that? We’re not a TV website.

It’s pretty much as simple as that.

Still, that brings us around neatly to Comedy Central’s brand new situation comedy Threesome which starts next week on the channel which actively encourages “Two & A Half Men”. Still, let’s not hold that against Threesome, which is the very first British sitcom to be commissioned by the channel.

Or should we? Let’s face it. A channel that bases so much of its daily programming in repeats of Two & A Half Men and the second worst sitcom ever made (Everybody Loves Raymond) surely won’t be able to make a sitcom that’s passable as anything more than a “cheap Coupling” or a “rotten Outnumbered”, so why should we provide them with any platform for their terrible programming decisions.

And yet… it was Comedy Central’s US parent that brought back Futurama.

Swings and roundabouts.

So now that the argument of bias against the network is neatly packed up into Charlie Sheen’s coke-case and dispatched to a forgotten part of the Colombian rainforest, what of Threesome? Does it stand up against the usual, painfully unfunny dross that spews forth from the urethra of British television channels like televisual kidney failure?

Yes, it does.

That is to say, it’s actually quite good. It’s sometimes easy to write off small group comedies as being a format that’s almost impossible to find new direction in but Threesome takes one night of drug-sodden lust and makes it the basis for a witty comedy which is both intelligent and utterly juvenile in equal measure.Ha

Having three 29 year olds living a life that is often the staple of this kind of comedy is a risk in the first place. The urge to switch off before even getting to five minutes is strong as you watch Richie, Alice and Mitch bounce around their lives like MDMA-riddled spinning tops, alternating between hungover and absolutely off their tits like a grown-up version of Skins. Quite literally on acid.

In saying that, the rapid characterisation of the first third of the show is a calculated risk in a show where one needs to make an almost instant connection to the characters. There’s no building up a like of the three friends. If you can’t find anything remotely likeable in them after ten minutes then turn off, go and make yourself a cup of tea and then tweet about how there aren’t any good British comedies any more while you pick flecked tissue out of your nose.

Given that the press shots ruin one of the few surprises in the show, prepare yourself for a spoiler. It’s a pregnancy story. The real question will be, after a strong first episode, will the characters fall into ‘comedy pregnancy’ stereotypes and lose their way in jokes about breastfeeding and Epidurals. The hope is that they won’t but the danger looms, omnipresent in every word of the last five minutes of the first episode and leaves the viewer praying that Threesome doesn’t end up shitting its undoubted potential up the wall.

The fact is that despite the accelerated characterisation and seeming flippancy of one of the most important events in the series, Threesome is a diverting half hour. It’s well shot, doesn’t rely on a laughter track and is well paced, not trying to cram too many jokes into a half hour and letting the situations provide the humour. Look out for Mitch going the wrong way up an escalator to see what we mean.

You can have a watch of episode one before its premiere on Comedy Central and decide for yourself. You don’t even have to have Sky. Which is nice.

Here’s some clips of the show:

No eye contact, no cock touching

Putting up flatpack furniture on drugs

Remember 2003?

Sure it was a long time ago – but let us jog your memory. The sky outside was often gray and dreary, flowers refused to bloom and the Internet bed linen industry absolutely boomed because bedridden people were too depressed to drop turd all the way over in the toilet.

Well no more – because Futurama has been un-cancelled. And we’re not talking about four more straight to DVD movies either – we’re talking about 26 new episodes on Comedy Central.

You still don’t believe us?

We don’t blame you. We’re sorry we ever told you we’re half-brothers with Coolio.

Trust restored.

In 2003 a black-faced torch holding mob of Fox executives took every single Futurama character out behind a barn. Once there, they stuffed them chock-full of steel barb and then crushed them beneath a sand roller (a heavy piece of machinery we probably just made up. It’s supposed to sound heavy). It wasn’t pretty.

We imagine the liquids from their animated bodies slowly pooled and scabbed as the execs walked back to their shiny, super long limos. At the time, nobody had any idea the killing wouldn’t be permanent. After all – this was way before Family Guy gloriously emerged from the tomb.

After the cancellation Futurama was swooped up by Cartoon Network, who proudly aired it as an Adult Swim anchor. When the show was contractually up for bid again - Comedy Central knew a good thing when they saw it. They outbid CN.

Then of course the four movies came out – one of which we claimed to be film of the year in ’08. The whole quadrilogy sold big. And now this from Reuters:

“Taking a page from the “Family Guy” resurrection guidebook, the canceled Fox animated comedy is returning with an order from Comedy Central for 26 new episodes to run over two seasons. “Futurama” creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen already are working on stories for the new batch of episodes of the sci-fi cartoon, slated to premiere on Comedy Central in mid-2010.”

Comedy Central says that if the new episodes draw a big enough crowd, they’ll try their darndest to bring other shows back from the bin too. Like Seinfeld, Cheers and confusingly, I Love Lucy. To make the latter happen we bet they use science.

And now to celebrate their triumphant return, we present a wonderful Futurama segment where in they wax sentimental about global warming.

In Spanish.

De nada.

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