FORGIVE us if we get a little nostalgic here, but we're old enough to remember a happy time, when ITV was bursting with great sitcoms such as Agony, Rising Damp and Bless This House.

Barely a week went by without viewers being able to enjoy a wealth of half-hour gag-fests, and while not all of them were classics – Leonard Rossiter’s The Losers and The Nesbitts Are Coming being just a couple consigned to the Where are they Now? file – at least the third channel was investing in comedies.

But then, like good Harrison Ford films, the genre seemed to dry up as reality TV and an obsession with soaps and dramas about thirtysomething women with psycho boyfriends took precedence.

Thankfully, it seems ITV have finally pulled their finger out in recent weeks and given us Vicious and The Job Lot.

The former is essentially a stage comedy with old luvvies Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi sending themselves up as, well, a couple of old luvvies. The series has divided opinion – some love it, others hate it.

Then there’s The Job Lot, a Midlands version of The Office, with him (Russell Tovey) from Him & Her, and her (Sarah Hadland) from the perplexingly successful Miranda.

Unlike the latter series, there’s no comedy turns to camera and arched eyebrows here. Just the fertile comedic ground covered by grotesque Job Seeker harridan Pauline in The League of Gentlemen.

There are echoes of that sad character in Angela (Jo Enwright), a joyless employee who makes it almost impossible for jobseekers to sign on. Little wonder co-worker Karl (Tovey) is losing the will to live.

Enwright has been one of the country’s best supporting stars for years, in projects such as I’m Alan Partridge, Phoenix Nights and Life’s Too Short. “My most glamorous job was cleaning urinals for Birmingham County Council in the late 1980s,” she explains in The Job Lot’s most memorable press pack quote.

In this week’s episode, Brownall is due for an anonymous inspection, security guard Janette (Angela Curran) is determined to beat the Great Barr branch in the league table, and Karl and George (Adeel Akhtar) join forces to interrogate a pair of big-time benefit cheats.