Second series of Tom Basden’s excellent sitcom Here We Go draws to a close

And that’s not all that’s going on – Maya is all set to move in with Amy, Sam’s GCSE exams are looming large, and Rachel, despite her unusually low threshold for pain tolerance, decides to get a tattoo. One has to feel for the artist…

Katherine Parkinson as Rachel has been superb throughout the series, but then she is among the safest pairs of hands when it comes to sitcoms – from The IT Crowd onward she has a proven knack for comedy.

And it helps that she has a wealth of personal experience from which to draw. Speaking ahead of the second series of Here We Go, Parkinson said of the character: “Well, I don’t think I’m as neurotic and chaotic as Rachel, but then when I actually say that out loud, and especially when I can hear my husband [the Toast of London actor Harry Peacock] laughing in the other room, I don’t know, maybe I am a little bit. I feel like I’m probably a toxic mix of neurotic and laid back.

“If anything, my parents – and I hope they wouldn’t mind me saying this – but their relationship, getting married young, like Paul and Rachel, is very similar… I grew up perhaps in a similar household to the Jessops.”

To illustrate the point, she relays a real-life anecdote: “I remember this one occasion we were all on holiday, walking up a mountain and my dad thought he saw a wolf up ahead – we all then had to go on a huge detour, it was farcical, my mum lost a shoe, we were all clambering on a mountain edge it seemed, and then when we finally reached the top, it turned out to be an Alsatian on a lead.”

That certainly does seem like it could have been lifted straight from one of Basden’s scripts.

What began as a lockdown-set one-off Comedy Playhouse pilot named Pandemonium has proven to be one of the BBC’s strongest sitcoms in years, emerging from the pandemic as a ready-made series that can continue to grow as the characters, and their lives, develop.

Whereas other shows, made by necessity within the restrictions imposed by Covid-19, failed to fire on all cylinders once the world began to open up again (a case in point being the genuinely inspired Staged, whose Zoom call-based format failed to feel so relevant or poignant in its later series), Pandemonium/Here We Go found its transition seamless.

A third series comprising seven episodes has already been commissioned by the BBC, and honestly we can see it running and running. Here’s hoping.