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Raised By Wolves series 2 episode 1: 'fizzingly funny'

Yoko (Molly Risker), Germaine (Helen Monks), and Aretha (Alexa Davies) in Raised by Wolves - Channel 4
Yoko (Molly Risker), Germaine (Helen Monks), and Aretha (Alexa Davies) in Raised by Wolves - Channel 4

"I’m not paying £29.99 a month to beam pixels through the friggin’ air,” barked a mother as she turned off the home wi-fi. It was mere seconds before her offspring howled in horror, aghast that their viewing of topless Tom Hardy pics and spot-squeezing videos had been interrupted. “Are you questioning my austerity policies?” snarled the mother. “Are you Corbyn-ing me?”

This was the return of Raised By Wolves (Channel 4), writer Caitlin Moran and her sister Caroline’s fizzingly funny sitcom – set in the present but based on their working class Wolverhampton childhood.  It’s a sort of feminist Shameless. Or Carla Lane’s Bread with a Black Country accent.

Phillip Jackson and Rebekah Staton 
Phillip Jackson and Rebekah Staton

When single mum Della (chain-smoking, scene-stealing Rebekah Staton) unplugged the broadband, her six children decamped to the local library to use the communal computers, borrow the books and  flirt with local lads. New-found knowledge and bus-stop snogs both ensued.

There aren’t many sitcoms with such a matter-of-fact view of poverty: Della restricted the kids’ calcium intake to stop them growing out of their hand-me-down clothes, squeezed three generations into the same council house and acquired home comforts from “the poor woman’s Ikea” (by scavenging in  a skip).

Raised by Wolves - Channel 4
Raised by Wolves - Channel 4

There are even fewer sitcoms where the dialogue is dotted with references to Deepak Chopra, Dr Seuss, Miss Jean Brodie, Gloria Steinem, JFK, trickle-down economics, Andrew Marr’s moped and Penelope Keith’s nipples. And there are no other sitcoms at all that can extract such mirth from library funding cuts.

Staton was swaggeringly superb, while the children were endearing and infuriating by turns – just as in real-life. Sure, the highly quotable script tries too hard at times. Occasional overwritten lines trip clumsily off the cast’s tongues, making them sound like mouthpieces for Moran rather than plausible characters.

However, Raised By Wolves packs more ideas and invention into one episode than lesser comedies do in an entire series. Besides, any programme where the favoured insult is “wazzock” is fine by me.