There's a new British sitcom called Threesome, starting on Comedy Central on Monday 17th October with a double bill from 9:30p.m.
New Brit comedy? Eek, some of you may be saying, hardly much of a reason to tune in. Yes, it has its flaws - not least an occasionally OTT approach to comedy acting as practised by many UK performers and a tendency to think it's a little cleverer than it actually is.
But there are enough laugh-out-loud moments in the first couple of episodes to suggest what is essentially Spaced meets She's Having A Baby looks like something worth persevering with. After all, a comedy's success is based on how funny it is. And this frequently is, at least in the eps I saw.
Written by young scripter Tom MacRae, who came up with the idea at a Turkish bath with best friend Russell Tovey off Being Human, it's about a trio of flakey young-ish flatmates - a couple (Amy Huberman/Stephen Wight) and their gay best friend (Emun Elliot)- who have a drunken threeway, get pregnant and decide to raise the baby.
After watching the screening, I grabbed a couple of minutes with Huberman - an Irish actress best known in England for being Irish rugby captain Brian O'Driscoll's wife, though she's had a successful decade-long career in her homeland.
I spoke to her just before she headed down to New Zealand to watch her hubby lose in the quarter-finals of the Rugby World Cup. Except when I pointed out that a certain Middle Earth-based movie was currently shooting down there, she spilled a little secret...
Me: Peter Jackson's shooting The Hobbit in NZ right now.
Amy Huberman: God, you've rumbled me! That's why I'm going down actually. I'll just go with massive elf ears and knock around the set. I'll just knock on Peter Jackson's door. 'I don't have anything to do between games. I'm free!'
Seems silly to be calling this your big break with more than ten years of acting under your belt, but does this feel a little like your breakthrough role?
I definitely feel that. I've been working consistently at home for ten years, but that pool is pretty small, so to be able to step out of that...It's very hard, very scary.
Have you started chatting to Brian about the possibility of parenthood?
(pauses) As me playing it, you're quite detached from it because the baby's not there. I always think if the kid is there, it makes it more real. My husband was at home in Dublin, so he wasn't seeing me with the bump. It must be such a massive leap when it's your first but it was fun to play it without any of the responsibility. But it is strange.
So maybe come Series 2 it'll all feel a bit more real..?
The baby will be there, unless we misplace it. Or drop it.