Community: Season 6

Jeff Winger is firmly ensconced in his new role as a teacher at Greendale Community College, but times are changing. Shirley has moved away to look after her sick father and the college is still in danger of closure. The Save Greendale committee is reinforced by the arrival of consultant Frankie Dart and old-skool computer expert Elroy Patashnik, who have to help the few remaining old students save the day.

It's ironic, but also a relief that Community, a show which hovered perpetually on the edge of cancellation for its entire 110-episode run, was allowed to end on its own terms. The show had been picked up by Yahoo after NBC terminated it at the end of the fifth season and Yahoo were keen to allow it to continue for at least one more season, but showrunner Dan Harmon decided to quit whilst he was ahead. His reasoning was that too many of the original regular cast had left and the show was no longer working with the same energy.

This is clearly visible on-screen. Community now feels like a very different beast. Although many of the episode plots were driven by the antics of Jeff Winger, Senor Chang or the Dean's latest crazy college activity (all of which remain intact), in many ways it was Troy and Shirley who were the heart of the show. At least Troy got a farewell in Season 5 but Shirley's extremely abrupt between-season departure is clearly an unplanned event that left the writers reeling to try to overcome it, and they don't really succeed.

This is no slight against Paget Brewster (Frankie Dart) or Keith David (Elroy), who both do very good work. It's just that they're being held to the very high standards of the characters who came before them, who had an unmatched chemistry with the rest of the cast. A sense of continuity is also not maintained due to the inexplicable departure of both John Oliver and Jonathan Banks from the Season 5 recurring cast.

The result is a season of Community that feels like it's running a little with its wings clipped. Episodes are a little less inventive than previously and Abed particularly feels limited as a character, as he no longer has Troy to riff off. This is a shame because many of the episode ideas feel like vintage Community: Honda sponsoring a ridiculous number of product placements at the college, a suddenly-famous Chang leaving midway through Abed's video shoot (forcing him to recycle the same brief clips into an entire movie) and the revelation that the paintball game has not ceased as previous seasons indicated, but instead moved underground.

The show is still funny, there's still some laughs and some more emotional beats, but there's also a sense of unbalance, of something missing. This is a subdued version of Community, one that's certainly still worth watching and is still a lot of fun, but also not running with the energy of earlier seasons. One moment where the show does rise to the occasion is the finale, which is bittersweet, poignant and genuinely funny, whilst retaining the metacommentary creator Dan Harmon is best-known for.

Community's sixth and final season (***½) is available now in the UK and USA. The much-promised movie has, alas, not yet appeared.

Community: Season 5

Jeff Winger's renewed legal career has crashed and burned, leading him reluctantly back to Greendale Community College and a new job. He reconnects with old friends and faces new challenges.

Community was a sitcom which fused pop culture references, metacommentary on the show's own fictional nature and biting humour, all elements brought to the table by its creator and chief writer, Dan Harmon. Due to behind-the-scenes politics and a clash between Harmon and actor Chevy Chase, Harmon was fired from the show between Seasons 3 and 4, and a new showrunning team brought on board. The resulting fourth season, although not a total disaster, was found to be lacking compared to the previous years. With Chase departing, Harmon was reinstated for the final two seasons.

Season 5 is an immediate improvement over its forebear. The high concepts are back, such as a completely animated episode which sees the regular characters joining G.I. Joe and a "Floor is Lava" game that gets completely out of hand. These are fun and amusing, with the stories and actors clearly reinvigorated by Harmon's return and Chase's departure (most of the cast agree that Chase could be a toxic presence on set).

However, the show struggles with a much bigger mid-season change: the departure of Donald Glover as Troy Barnes. Troy is one of the most consistently funny characters on the show and is also arguably its heart, with the Troy-Abed relationship being the cornerstone of the series. Glover's departure leaves a gap that the show can't quite fill, despite a spirited attempt to team up Abed with Annie instead.

Other changes are more successful: after a two-season absence, John Oliver returns as Professor Duncan and immediately re-injects his brand of snarky humour back into the series, whilst Jonathan Banks (Breaking Bad) is phenomenal as Professor Hickey. A second Dungeons and Dragons episode may be a little self-derivative, but it works well, and the season-long arc about finding a way of saving Greendale is reasonably successful.

The fifth season of Community (****) restores some of the zest and energy lost in the fourth, but the departure of Troy and the near-immediate reduction in character of Abed is a sign that perhaps the show has suffered too many cast departures to remain viable. It is available now in the UK and USA.

RICK & MORTY renewed for 70 episodes

In an unusual move, Adult Swim have ordered 70 episodes of Rick & Morty without a season commitment.

Darn Harmon and Justin Roiland's series has only aired three seasons and 31 episodes since debuting in December 2013, with Season 4 not expected to air until 2019, meaning this order will more than double the existing number of episodes and potentially last for another ten years given current production rates.

Harmon and Roiland's deal, which specifies episodes rather than seasons, came after a chaotic production process for the third season, which saw fewer episodes produced than originally planned and an extended writing period. The new deal raises the possibility of the series being continued in batches of episodes made a few at a time rather than large numbers of episodes ordered on a tight deadline, and gives Harmon and Roiland more flexibility in how to handle the show going forwards.

Rick and Morty: Season 3

Earth now knows of the existence of alien life and has been "inducted" into the Galactic Federation. Rick Sanchez is a prisoner of the Federation, his mind constantly being probed for information. Needless to say, it isn't long before Rick has escaped, reunited with his family and once again begins a new series of adventures...that is, if his own self-loathing doesn't destroy him and everyone around him in the process.

For its first two seasons, Rick and Morty was a cult show with a solid but small fanbase. In the two years since Season 2 aired, however, the show's fame has exploded. DVD, Blu-Ray and Netflix have brought the show to a more widespread, global audience, Ricky and Morty T-shirts are now everywhere and memes from the show are widespread.

As the first season to air in the full view of a global audience, this third go-around for Rick and his grandson Morty starts off feeling a bit off, like Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland are a bit blinded by the glare of worldwide publicity. Where jokes and ideas in the first two seasons came naturally, the humour in the third season feels a little forced, at least to start with, and going for a Mad Max: Fury Road spoof in the second episode feels a bit lazy (and rather late). Once the show gets a couple of episodes under its belt, however, things relax and we're back into Rick and Morty as we know it: an escalating series of crazy intergalactic adventures rooted in the characters' mundane home life.

The home life side of things is somewhat reduced this year, though. Jerry and Beth have separated (and aside, from a couple of key episodes, Jerry sits out a large chunk of the season) and what focus there is on Earthside adventures instead delves deeply into Rick's psyche. One of the more interesting twists of the show is that Rick is often simultaneously the protagonist and antagonist (and sometimes the villain, but not really the hero) of the series, with this season showing his uglier, nastier side in even greater detail then we've seen it before. The show seems to want to hammer home the idea that Rick is not a nice or mentally well-adjusted person, which is a reasonable move as it adds character depth, but sometimes the show feels like it's going overboard with it (especially since, almost invariably, Rick eventually comes good before the end of the episode).

This dark journey into Rick's soul is effective, if a bit overdone, but the season is at its best when it relaxes a little and goes bananas. The "Pickle Riiiick!" episode successfully mixes the two approaches, and the season finale works as a knockabout adventure. The best episode of the season, in fact, is the seventh, where "our" Rick and Morty sit out the episode in favour of a storyline set entirely on the Citadel, where Ricks and Mortys from across the multiverse live together. This clever and inventive episode sets up what should have been a long-term plot developing over the season, although this was sabotaged as production delays meant that the season was cut by four episodes. Hopefully we should see this plotline developed next season instead.

The third season of Rick and Morty (****) is therefore watchable, reliably entertaining and full of quite a few genuine laughs and thought-provoking moments. However, it's arguably the least consistent in terms of quality, some storylines are not really well-developed and its decision to stare into the rotten soul of Rick for episodes on end can become repetitive. There's also a distinct lack of memorable new characters this year. But it remains one of the most interesting and amusing animated shows on air.

The series is available to watch now via Adult Swim in the US and Netflix in the UK and most other territories.

HARMONQUEST returns for a second season

Dan Harmon's fantasy roleplaying/improvisational comedy show HarmonQuest is returning for a second season.

The first season of the show was one of the unexpected highlights of last year. It was very funny and revelled in showing the fun that people can have playing a pen-and-paper RPG. The season ended in an epic battle (where the regular crew were joined by Nathan Fillion) against the forces of evil and were triumphant, but at the cost of one of their number being sucked into a portal into an other dimension. It was a bit of a cliffhanger, which I assume will be addressed in the new season.

Guest stars this season will include Harmon's Community buddy Gillian Jacobs, Elizabeth Olsen (late of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Scarlet Witch) and comedian and actor Patton Oswalt.

The second season will air on Seeso in the summer.

Rick & Morty: Season 2

Rick and Morty's adventures through space and time continue. The intrepid twosome have to defend Earth from an interstellar musical reality show, avoid the long arm of the galactic law, repair Morty's parents' marriage and attend the wedding of Rick's best friend Birdperson. Needless to say, things go horrendously wrong.

Rick and Morty's first season was by turns hilarious and clever, witty and coarse, smart and nuanced. Few shows even try to employ a fart gag followed by a humorous riff on quantum theory, but Rick and Morty does so with aplomb.

This second season picks up after the first and continues several continuing subplots, such as the dubious state of Beth and Jerry's marriage and Rick's ongoing self-loathing and pain that he is trying to bury through his scientific work. The second season amps these up to eleven, going beyond even the pathos that Season 1 evoked on occasion and hitting poignancy along the way. Like the best SFF comedies (Red Dwarf and Futurama), Rick and Morty succeeds through not just its comedy, but its intelligence and fine grasp of characterisation.

Season 2 revisits some supporting characters from Season 1 like Birdperson but there's also some new characters, such as the enigmatic Poopy Butthole (around whose bizarre character various fan theories of varying credibility circle), and also a willingness to change things up. In Season 1 Earth was unaware of the existence of alien life and higher dimensions. Season 2 rather dramatically changes that up with major ramifications for the rest of the series, showing a willingness to change the format to keep things fresh. There's also more of a willingness to involve Summer, Beth and Jerry on adventures and continue making Morty more of a grown-up, stronger character.

But the star of the show remains Rick, whose brilliance and humour hide a lot of pain and growing existential fear of death. He has flashes of humanity but these are challenged by his amorality, something that previously he didn't care about but now he has family members acting as his moral compass and making him question some things about his life. For an animated TV show with a character called "Poopy Butthole", Rick and Morty does have some damned fine writing.

It's also still brilliantly funny, with Season 2 featuring a brilliant riff on the classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Inner Light through a video game called Roy, as well as playing with sitcom conventions when Jerry's hitherto-completely-unmentioned brother Steve shows up to stay, with spectacularly gory results.

Season 2 of Rick and Morty (****½) is available now on DVD (USA) and Blu-Ray (UK, USA). It is also now available to watch on Netflix in the UK and Ireland. Season 3 is due to start airing in the USA in December or January.

Rick and Morty: Season 1

Rick Sanchez is a brilliant but morally dubious inventor who has the ability to travel through time and space. Forced to move in with his daughter Beth and her "normal" family, Rick has soon embroiled them in his misdeeds, particularly his easily-influenced and hyper-sensitive grandson Morty. Rick and Morty set off on intergalactic adventures, but things soon become odd at home, as Morty's sister Summer gets a job with the devil, and Beth's husband Jerry gets fired after being inadvertently kidnapped by aliens and placed in a low-AI VR simulation of his own life.

Rick and Morty is an animated series airing on Adult Swim in the USA. It's the brainchild of Justin Roiland, a voice actor and writer, but given some additional creative firepower by Dan Harmon, the creator of Community and recent projets including the excellent HarmonQuest.

To sum up, Rick and Morty is a mash-up of Back to the Future, Futurama, South Park and an everyday family sitcom, with a light sprinkling of Archer over the top. The series is ribald, madcap, zany but it is also surprisingly restrained and occasionally even reaches pathos, especially when it deals with Jerry and Beth's strained relationship, and the fact that Morty was once diagnosed with learning difficulties. It can also occasionally be rather unsettling, going for a funny gag that then becomes outright disturbing, such as the encounter between Morty and a sexually-frustrated royal jelly bean in a toilet that has you reaching for the remote in horror before, fortunately, the scene ends on a non-vomit-inducing note.

It's an interesting mix of the cynical and post-cool (particularly with Rick's apathetic, amoral attitude to life) with the genuinely heartwarming and optimistic. The comedy mixes toilet humour with much cleverer and more subtle gags about genuine scientific issues (the planet/not-planet status of Pluto fuels one of the stronger instalments of Season 1), catchphrases you'll soon be yelling at uncomprehending non-viewers and some wry observations on school, work and home life. It also has giant space genies which can be summoned to perform simple tasks but then meet a totally insolvable problem (how to make Jerry a good golfer) which turns them into rampaging psychopaths.

Rick and Morty's greatest asset is that it is simply hilarious, employing a wide variety of mundane and science fiction inspirations to generate humour from almost every scene and line of dialogue. But, like all of the best comedies (and especially SFF comedies, which often settle for lazy stereotyping), it generates that comedy from having very well-defined, conflicted and interesting characters. This is a well-judged comedy with brains and heart to offset its cynicism.

Season 1 of Rick and Morty (****) is available now on DVD (USA) and Blu-Ray (UK, USA). It is also now available to watch on Netflix in the UK and Ireland.

RICK AND MORTY arrives on Netflix UK

Adult Swim's hit animated series Rick and Morty has arrived in the UK thanks to Netflix.

This animated show - co-created by Darn Harmon of Community and HarmonQuest fame - starts off as a bemused and demented homage to Back to the Future, with the Doc Brown-esque Rick and the Marty McFly-riffing Morty teaming up using advanced science to solve problems. However, the similarities pretty much end there. Rick is a high-functioning alcoholic with a detached, almost amoral attitude. Marty is a 14-year-old kid who starts off being described as having learning difficulties, but later episodes establish him as a smart and resourceful kid who grows increasingly impatient with Rick's activities.

The show is anarchic and crazy, moving between stories set on Earth or in Morty's school and bonkers adventures set in outer space or in parallel universes. The series is funny and frequently gross, and occasionally does the South Park thing of suddenly becoming dramatically intense and uncomfortable as it tries to make a satirical point stick. The Week has a good assessment of the show here.

With an accomplished voice cast and some stunning visuals, Rick and Morty is an underrated and highly watchable gem. Season 1 is available on the UK version of Netflix now and Season 2 will apparently follow in the next few weeks. Season 3 is due to start airing in the US in December.

HarmonQuest: Season 1

Fantasy roleplaying! A bunch of friends create characters - wizards, elves, thieves, dwarves, sorcerers and what have you - and make their way through a vivid world created and controlled by the Dungeon Master Gamemaster. Various attempts have been made to capture the fun of roleplaying and put it on the screen, but they've largely ended up being a bit poor.

HarmonQuest takes a different tack by combining fantasy roleplaying with improvisational comedy in the vein of Whose Line Is It Anyway? Just typing that makes me realise how blinding obvious an idea it is and why no-one thought of it years ago and cashed in. HarmonQuest features three regular players: Dan Harmon, the famous comedy writer (Community, Rick & Morty) and podcaster (Harmontown); comedian Erin McGathy; and actor Jeff Davis. Respectively, they play half-orc ranger Fondue Zoobag, elven barbarian Biaro Shift and goblin rogue Bone Weevil.

There is also a special guest slot which is filled in by a rotating cast of comedians and actors: Paul F. Tompkins, Ron Funches, John Hodgman, Rhea Butcher, Kumail Nanjiani (as a pathological gold and handjob-obsessed kobold), Matt Gourley, Steve Agee, Chelsea Peretti (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) and Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley), along with an excellent appearance by the immortal Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Castle). The greatest turn, arguably, comes from the mighty Aubrey Plaza (Parks & Recreation) as the randomly insane gnome Hawaiian Coffee. The in-joke is that the guest characters can't continue into the next episode, so they have to be introduced to the adventure, fulfil a vital story role and then be written out (usually killed off in a ludicrous manner, but a couple survive) in an organic fashion, all in an hour (the episodes are the edited half-hour highlights of each game session).

That's a tall order for any Dungeon Master Gamemaster, but fortunately HarmonQuest employs the impressive skills of Spencer Crittenden, a GM for the ages. His ability to let the crazy comedy play out when it should, reign in the insanity when it threatens to completely sidetrack the adventure and pushing the story forwards whilst adapting for his players' impressive improvisational skills is completely amazing. I feel a better Gamemaster for just having watched him in action.

The adventure itself is splendid, old-skool fun: Fondue and Bone Weevil's favourite village haunt is destroyed by an evil cult seeking to unleash a powerful manticore upon the world. Teaming up with barbarian warrioress Biaro, they try to stop the cult getting its hands on the three gems it needs to complete the summoning ritual. This doesn't entirely go to plan. Along the way they have to deal with Fondue's unresolved childhood issues and confused sexuality (Harmon basically making a one-man argument in favour of characterisation in roleplaying), Bone Weevil's need for respect and Biaro's tendency to hulk out in a barbarian rage. There's some excellent running jokes but it's the guest actors that really make the show, each one bringing a different sensibility and style to the story which mixes things up nicely.

The big trick in the bag is that each episode of HarmonQuest is partly animated, with the live-action shots showing the actors and players discussing what they want to do and animated segments showing the result of their plans. The animation is colourful, well-characterised and quite funny. This is HarmonQuest's ace in the hole which lifts it from being simply entertaining to occasionally bordering on genius.

It's all very, very funny, although some episodes are funnier than others: the first, fifth and last ones are the stand-outs but even the weakest installment still unleashes regular laughs. Interestingly, the actors who have serious Dungeons and Dragons fantasy roleplaying experience seem to be the least amusing, as they take it all a bit too seriously, whilst those who have never played seem to do the best as they don't worry about the rules, just having a fun time.

I'd be interested to see that audiences with no fantasy roleplaying background at all make of it, but the show pulls back on anything to do with the rules in favour of the story and laughs so it should be pretty accessible for everyone.

Season 1 of HarmonQuest (****½) is excellent, being clever, funny and featuring a surprisingly well-executed story. I recommend it very much.

You can see Episode 1 on YouTube (embedded above) but the remaining nine episodes are only available (right now) on the Seeso streaming service in the United States. I imagine there will be some kind of international release (Netflix? Amazon?) for those wanting to watch the show in other parts of the world.

Note: the fantasy roleplaying game that is being used is the excellent Pathfinder from Paizo Publishing and, as Harmon rather worriedly points out several times, absolutely not Dungeons and Dragons in any way, shape or form, and certainly not any that suggests anything even vaguely copyright-infringing.

Watch the first episode of HARMONQUEST right now

Behold, adventurer! You can watch the first episode of roleplaying comedy show Harmonquest right now, via the YouTube link below.

Harmonquest is an animated Pathfinder game session (Pathfinder is basically Dungeons and Dragons, don't worry about it). Dan Harmon, the creator/co-creator of Community and Ricky & Morty, and a bunch of pals play the game, with some of their actions given animated life thanks to the animation team behind Rick & Morty. There is a regular group of gamers and also a special guest spot which rotates every episode. The first episode is very funny.

The other nine episodes can be watched through NBC's streaming service SeeSo if you're in the United States. If you're not then, er, tough luck right now, but apparently an international viewing solution is in the works. If the rest of the season is as good as the first ep (and according to reviews, it is) then it should be worth the wait.

Community: Season 3

It's the group's third year at Greendale Community College and once again their attempts to get good grades are threatened by their flamboyant Dean, the mentally unstable Chang (now unwisely made part of the college's security force) and a new threat in the form of Vice Dean Laybourne, head of the Air Conditioning Repair Annex, who now seeks to take control of the college for himself.

After the second season of Community, which featured an overload of classic, high-concept episodes and an internal battle between the other members of the group and Pierce, it was unclear which direction the third season would go in. For the first couple of episodes, it's clear the producers don't either. The addition of John Goodman (as Laybourne) and Michel K. Williams as Professor Kane are good starts, but it's not until the third episode, Remedial Chaos Theory, that the show hits its former stride again. The Emmy and Hugo-nominated episode, which revisits the same events in six different timelines and cleverly comments on each character's place in the group in the process, is flat-out hilarious as well as being clever, and sets up a couple of recurring elements that are periodically revisited throughout the year.

However, despite this early high point, the third season remains patchy. The decision to tone Pierce down this season results in his near-total absence from many episodes. Without him in an adversarial role, the writers seem to struggle to find something plausible for him each week without him falling back on his traditional (and now rather tired) homophobia and casual racism. There is a potentially promising storyline when Pierce's ancient and even more horrific father arrives in town, allowing the writers to show how the group has made Pierce (relatively) more tolerant and understanding, but even this is under-explored.

In the meantime, we have yet more adventures with Chang being insane, which is getting old. Ken Jeong is funny enough that this - more or less - works, but you can't help feeling it's a bit of a cheap stand-by. Even worse is the decision to make Dean Pelton a regular character. This results in a lot of running gags and very broad comedy based around the fact that the Dean is gay, which feels odd for a series that spends so much time trying to avoid cliches. Having said that, the Dean's battle with his nemesis Laybourne does give the season a dramatic spine and a sense of direction.

Elsewhere, the performances of the regulars remain superb, individual gags are often hilarious and, after taking a back seat in Season 2, character development moves to the fore, with the show concentrating on Abed as an actual character than an ongoing commentary on what's happening in each episode. Annie, Shirley, Troy and Jeff also get good moments of character evolution throughout the season. On the flipside of that, Britta fares poorly, with the slight turn she took into 'dumb blonde' territory in Season 2 now turning into a full-scale character regression (so overt that it's even lampshaded at one point). It's a shame that a character who was an essential foil for Jeff in the first two seasons is now being treated as a hate figure by almost everyone.

In terms of the episodes, Remedial Chaos Theory is the undeniable high point, but other episodes are strong. Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps, in which the gang tell horror stories (so Britta can try to work out which of them is a sociopath-in-the-making) is extremely amusing, especially Abed's remorselessly sensible and logical take on a horror movie narrative. The Ken Burns-influenced mid-season two-parter, which presents an epic blanket fort vs pillow fort war fought across the whole college (complete with detailed, animated maps of the battle lines and commentary from those involved), is another instant classic. Basic Lupine Urology isn't just a great episode, but also a phenomenal mickey-take of the Law and Order franchise (and Michael K. Williams gets to make a few references to his former role as Omar on The Wire, which takes place in the same fictional universe). Curriculum Unavailable tries to recast the events of the entire series with the study group being inmates at a mental institution, a successful satire of unconvincing 'plot twists' in long-running series. Digital Estate Planning, which forces the group to play an 8-bit video game, is almost as good as Remedial, with the video game being used to expose both rifts in the group (not to mention the Christian Shirley's suppressed homicidal streak) and encourage their cooperation as well.

Against this, there's probably a few too many episodes centred around the Dean and Chang, whose broad characterisations don't lend themselves too well to central roles in an ongoing series. There's also the feeling that Community's meta-awareness and commitment to avoiding cliche is too often turned into distinct smugness at its own cleverness. This is most notable in the first few episodes, before it calms down and just gets on with having fun again.

After the third season, Community wouldn't quite be the same again. Showrunner Dan Harmon was taken off the show for the fourth season (though he would return for the fifth) and Chevy Chase would depart in the following year.

The third season of Community (****) is relentlessly entertaining, very funny and often very clever. Where it falls down is not matching it own very high standards and occasionally getting too tangled up in its own desire to be funny whilst avoiding stereotypes, whilst not always having anything new or interesting for the characters to do (particularly Britta, Pierce, Chang and the Dean). But ultimately this is still one of the funniest shows on the air. The season is available on DVD in the UK and USA.

Community: Season 2

It's the second year at Greendale Community College for Jeff Winger and his study group, who are now taking an anthropology class together. Their mutual study time is again interrupted by a succession of unlikely adventures (ranging from Abed having a mental breakdown in which he envisages the world as a claymation film to a total paintball apocalypse) as they grow and learn together. Apart from Pierce, obviously, who becomes even more of an obnoxious bigot.

Season 2 of Community sees the show building on the moderate change in direction seen in late Season 1, when creator Dan Harmon started leaving behind more mundane storylines about relationships in favour of whackier adventures, often revolving around some kind of gimmick or high concept (albeit a well-executed one). Most of the episodes in Season 2 can be summed up by their concept: the bottle episode where everyone searches for Annie's missing pen; the claymation episode; the clip show which doesn't actually use any reused footage; the paintball war sequel two-parter; and the now-famous Dungeons and Dragons episode.

This move to a more concept-driven approach has both upsides and downsides. The show is definitely much more inherently funny in the second season, with both big ideas and small gags being delivered on a more consistently amusing basis. Unfortunately, this moves does come a little at the expense of serious characterisation. Annie and Abed both get some good scenes of emotional development, but other characters suffer: Britta is a lot less present this year and has less to do, whilst Shirley is all but missing in some episodes. Even our erstwhile main character Jeff seems much less the focal character and more just one of the band this time around. The issues with Jeff and Britta seem related to the fact that the will they/won't they dynamic of the first season has been resolved, but indicates there isn't as much to their characters as some of the others without that element. That said, Jeff gets a bit more to do towards the end of the season revolving around his (unasked-for) position as the group's leader and his conflicted feelings over that.

There's a larger secondary cast as well, with the introduction of the Dean's nemesis from a rival college and more recurring students in the anthropology class. Dr. Ian Duncan also has some great scenes as the teacher of the class (replacing ex-Golden Girl Betty White as Dr. Bauer, after a hilarious turn in the first episode of the season) and also a key role in the excellent claymation episode. The Dean is more bearable as well, mainly because he gets an (splendidly-lampshaded in the not-a-clip-show episode) amusing recurring gag. This larger cast makes the college feel busier and more like a real college, but also sometimes dilutes the focus on our core six characters.

Another challenge for the show is how it handles the character of Pierce, played by Chevy Chase. As established in Season 1 Pierce has racist and sexist views, but the show really seems reluctant to have him evolving away from them (since that would be unrealistic for a character of his age, whose views are more likely to be set in stone). At the same time, it's also unrealistic for the other characters to be so tolerant of someone who spends most of his time insulting them. This results in a story arc where Pierce turns into an outright villain whose antics put him at odds with the rest of the group. This is partially successful, giving us the 'Pierce's gifts' episode which is fairly decent, but otherwise sabotaged by the need not to go all-out with it lest it means Pierce not interacting with the rest of the characters at all. A simpler solution would have been to simply remove the character, but apparently the network considered him too key to the show to lose (and, in fact, choosing to remove even the showrunner over Chase between the third and fourth seasons). The entire issue is well-handled in the D&D episode, where Pierce is forced to play separately to the rest of the team (a familiar situation to most D&D groups where the characters become divided), but other episodes struggle to deal with it as well.

Overall, Community remains a funny, well-written and often extremely clever show in its second season (****½). It loses a little depth to the characters in favour of high concepts, but remains resolutely entertaining. The season is available now in the UK and USA.

Community: Season 1

Jeff Winger is a hotshot lawyer whose career has been brought to a screeching halt due to the slight problem of his qualifications being non-existent. He has to attend Greendale Community College for four years and pass a series of tests to regain his law credentials. An attempt to seduce a fellow student, Britta, by inviting her to a fictitious study group spirals out of control, resulting in the creation of a real study group. As the group goes through the school year, they learn and grow together. And also inadvertently create a copyright-infringing school anthem, give the college a guy in a gimp suit as its mascot and then almost destroy the place in a titanic paintball game that goes horrendously awry.

Community is entering its fourth season in the USA, but may be one of the best-kept secrets on television. Airing to mediocre ratings in the States and having almost no profile at all in the UK, it's nevertheless a funny, confident show which acts as both an obvious comedy and also something of a commentary on social dynamics and pop culture. The 'community' of the title is a reference to the central characters, who are all outcasts of one type of another, and their bonding together, and also to the wider college around them, personified through a recurring cast of tutors and other students.

Early episodes are mostly spent with the show trying to avoid cliches, with the character of Abed (Danny Pudi) always ready to compare an episode's storyline to something he saw on Friends or M*A*S*H*. This constant meta-commentary and attempts at ironic post-post-modernism are amusing but also slightly tiresome, with the show occasionally feeling a little smug with itself or else flailing at trying not to be caught between cliches. However, it's not long before the writers stop caring about that (at least quite so much) and instead concentrate on having fun. Community melds both the characters and the situations they encounter into compelling storylines that feel a lot longer than their modest 22 minutes-per-episode run times would suggest.

The actors are all excellent in their roles, particularly Joel McHale as Jeff, who has to make an inherently unlikable character likable without weakening the character, which he just about manages to do. The aforementioned Pudi is also great at portraying a character who initially appears to be the most predictable of the group but rapidly develops some interesting depths. Donald Glover takes the initially dull character of Troy and rapidly (by the end of episode two and its iconic Spanish rap number) turns him into a highlight of the show, thanks to some great comic timing. Yvette Nicole Brown's Shirley initially appears to be the 'mother' figure of the show, but some revelations about her personal life and gossipping tendencies turn that on its head. There's also a glorious cynicism about the character of Pearce (played by Chevy Chase, enjoying a career resurgence), a casually sexist and racist old man whose role in the group appears to primarily be making the other characters feel good about themselves. Alison Brie and Gillian Jacobs round off the primary cast as Annie and Britta, who initially both seem fairly straightforward characters before gaining more layers as the season progresses.

Slightly less successful are the supporting characters, most notably Ken Jeong as 'Senor' Chang whose character is rather broad (more effectively in some episodes than others) and Jim Rash as the Dean, who random weirdness (he has a sexual predilection for people in dalmatian costumes) is wearying. Still, both have their strong moments as the season progresses.

After the first few, slightly more pedestrian episodes, the season takes an upward turn in quality, culminating in the now-legendary paintball episode, Modern Warfare, when the show's ingredients combine together to create something hilarious, mildly emotional and completely demented, leaving the viewer eager to see what the writers and cast can do in the second year.

Season 1 of Community (****½) is well-written, sharply-acted and finely-observed, with more going on under the hood than you might expect from a situation comedy. The show is available now in the UK and USA.