Home from Home
BBC ONE, 9.30PM
A considerable advance on the tentative pilot that aired back in 2016 alongside the rather more confident and vituperative Motherland, this full series for Coronation Street graduates Simon Crowther and Chris Fewtrell’s sitcom has grown sharper, more polished and, crucially, funnier in the interim. It rejoins Stokedwelling grafters Neil and Fiona Hackett (Johnny Vegas and Niky Wardley, the latter replacing Joanna Page) and their teenage sons as they return to their tumbledown Lake District holiday lodge for the summer; just across the way, nouveau riche on-site neighbours Robert and Penny Dillon (Adam James, jovial but emasculated, and resentful would-be bohemian Emilia Fox) are back as well.
Throw in an oddball site manager (Pearce Quigley) threatening to erect a Wi-fi mast outside the Hacketts’ lodge, a conspiracy theorist (Susan Calman) warning darkly about clones of Kevin Costner, and a slow build of paranoia, frustration and inadequacy for Vegas to savour and you have a thoroughly inoffensive half-hour of wellstructured, smartly cast farce. It doesn’t reinvent the sitcom but it’s an enjoyable riff on familiar themes. Gabriel Tate