A new E4 series called Misfits you say? About a group of young delinquents doing community service?

We’ve not been this put off a new TV series since the Bad Girls pilot. In fact, the likelihood of a good series coming from E4 is akin to that of finding a hen’s tooth, or Tess Daly’s soul.

Imagine the disquiet and shock which consumed us when we saw the first episode of this teen-insert genre here and discovered it’s actually quite good. Maybe Tess Daly has a soul after all.*

To get the comparison cliché out of the way, Misfits can be best described as Dead Set meets Heroes meets Shameless. There’s certainly a comic book feel to it à la Heroes, despite writer Howard Overman maintaining ignorance of the illustration laden literature.

In this television programme, a number of actors pretend to possess a different personality to their own, in a number of staged situations and circumstances. Their words are also not their own, they are given to them beforehand by the aforementioned writer, Howard Overman. In the opening episode this group of young, mostly unknown actors pretend to perform manual tasks in order to fulfil the community service aspect of their respective characters’ sentencing. An artificially created storm interrupts them, and through a combination of wind, rain, and CG effects, they are struck by lightning. None of them are harmed – on the contrary, they awake with some super powers. They are bestowed with the ability to hear thoughts, turn back time, become invisible, and to instil in people an intense sexual desire.

This wee acting conglomerate is lead by Robert Sheehan, a young Irishman best known for his role as BJ in the excellent Red Riding series. Robert (or Nathan, as he purports to be in this) provides plentiful comic relief in the Irish craic style popularised by Les Dennis‘ impression of Graham Norton in Extras.

In series such as this or Heroes, realism and grittiness are highly sought-after commodities. Such things are mostly unobtainable in a fantasy scenario such as this, so a substantial amount of credit is due to this relatively inexperienced writer. Howard has also successfully captured the often foul dialogue of teenagers while retaining enough clarity in order for it to be understood by a wider audience.

An impressive social media campaign will be running alongside the series to both accompany and expand on the story arc via Twitter, Facebook and YouTube etc. To make this worthwhile to viewers, those who pay close attention will be rewarded with a character who won’t be revealed on TV till episode six, amongst other things.

All in all, this looks set to be one of those popular ones.

Misfits starts on E4 on Thurs Nov 12 at 10pm

*She doesn’t.

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After establishing itself as one of E4’s more successful shows which isn’t Friends or Big Brother, the programme has taken a strange and swift change of direction. Instead of building on the foundations of the second series, the producers have instead decided to tell the original cast to bugger off as they’ve hired some fresh meat.

At the end of Skins 2, we all cried a little tear as each character got their A-level results and went off to do their own thing. Nerdy Sid decided he was going to hunt New York City for Cassie, the love of his life. Someone should have told him though that the city is a big place. At least double the size of Bristol.

The group of friends did put aside their bickering to unite as one at the funeral of Chris who died from a blood clot to the brain. What a shitter, his girlfriend Jal was up the duff with his child. Oh well, she can always rely on the state for some benefit money.

Patchy lovers Tony and Michelle ended up getting the results they needed to get in to Uni. The distance between Cardiff and York seemed to stretch their rekindled romance as they amicably called it off. This comes despite everyone knowing students don’t do 9-5 days and spend most of their time getting pissed, eating Pot Noodles and plagiarising essays off Wikipedia and Google Books.

Where does that leave us then? The only member of the cast to have been retained is Effy, the sister of Tony. Whilst making the odd appearance in a couple of episodes, we are warmly reminded of the time when she got wasted on drugs and was saved by her brother who was nearly made to make sweet incestuous love to his sister.

So who have we got to replace the existing characters? E4’s website lists the following people who between them will consume Bristol’s entire supply of pills while bopping around to wooden-sounding electro.

Pandora – An adorable virgin. This basically means she will lose her virginity at some point. But who will be the first to spread her legs and get in to her love box? You know, Pandora’s Box? Oh never mind.

Thomas – Thomas is a good honest soul and has moved to a new country. More than likely he’ll be corrupted and involved in countless sex sessions involving a bottle of chilli sauce and some pliers.

Cook – Cook pulls off daring and dangerous stunts. He’ll be the one to arse everything up, the annoying person who constantly craves attention.

Freddie – Has got bags of potential but no va va vooom. Thierry Henry will solve this by giving him a new Renault.

JJ – The master illusionist has a huge imagination. With child-like excitement, he dreams up entertaining schemes. After cutting an assistant in half by mistake, he’ll morph into a younger Paul Daniels to be more like his idol.

Katie – Super smart Katie is shedding her identical twin skin. Either she’ll take some drugs, go a rave or stay up past her normal bedtime. She’s Emily’s twin!

Emily – Likes being a twin, but she’s crippled by her own shyness. Blah blah blah, she’ll find some confidence and do some sort of hilarious swap with her twin sister Emily in an exam.

Naomi – Passionate, political and principled, no one believes in anything anymore. Erm…we don’t know. Maybe she’ll burn her bra.

So, there we go. Expect shagging, swearing and all sorts of mental behaviour! Does it reflect our childhood in an easy-to-digest hour-long show? No, not really – we experienced things more like E4’s other home-grown show The Inbetweeners. Go on, admit it. It’s a more realistic portrayal of teenage life.

Skins series 3 begins tomorrow on E4. Let’s go crazy!

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In new US import Samantha Who, however, the list of things to forget is as long and distinguished as Slider’s Johnson, featuring a lead character who just can’t remember a damned thing.

As it turns out, that’s a definite plus for Samantha Newly (Christina Applegate), the victim of a hit and run who awakes from an eight-day coma only to discover she has retrograde amnesia.

Family and friends are strangers, but the one thing that our Sam can discern is that until right now, she has spent her life as a full time megabitch who could give lessons in how to lose friends and alienate people.

The premise of the show is that Sam now has to go about discovering the extent of her old ‘Bad Sam’ persona, torn between Andrea – her old partner in putdowns – and Dena, a rejected high school friend who has taken advantage of Sam’s amnesia to announce herself new BFF number one.

If that all sounds slightly familiar, that’s because, er, it is. My Name Is Earl has already trod similar ground, albeit with more invention and humour, and as Sandra Bullock’s remaining fans will remember, While You Were Sleeping also rings a few bells here.

Lack of originality may not be a surprise from co-creator and producer Cecilia Ahern though; the daughter of former Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was responsible for the novel of Hilary Swank vehicle PS I Love You, a rom-com so sickly sweet it could remove your stomach lining.

Not that that has held Samantha Who back, and after a successful first run in the states with Emmy nominations for both Applegate and Jean Smart as her fame-hungry mother Regina, the second season is starting soon on ABC.

How they’re going to keep the plot going will be interesting to see, but this pilot episode does have plenty to enjoy. Applegate does her ‘yes I’m really pretty, but ooh, I’m so sarcastic’ brand of humour that worked so well in Anchorman, and when she reverts to ‘Bad Sam’ she’s a lot of fun to watch.

Jean Smart is also sharp as her laughably bad mother, throwing some great barbs at Jennifer Esposito’s Andrea and stealing most of the scenes she’s in.

So it’s passable, if very girly, fun – but then what is Sunday night E4 for? It could definitely be a grower, but it seems that Samantha Who, like her own past, may be all too easily forgotten.