Now it may be the big geek in me, but I had to raise a suspicious eyebrow at the very beginning of the first episode of 'Coming of Age', when a character announces how proud he is after getting to Level 14 of 'Final Fantasy 12'. Now, first of all, computer games don’t have separate levels any more, and even in the RPG world of 'Final Fantasy', getting your character to attribute level 14 is barely an achievement at all, let alone one that could be described as godly. What concerns me greatly about this is not that it represents a minor inaccuracy about a computer game that I have a deep love and respect for, it's the fact that it is so very easy to fact-check something like this, and have your character say something vaguely appropriate about a very popular computer game, instead of something that does not ring true at all, that it suggests our dear writer has been very lazy indeed when putting together the first episode of his very own comedy series, which does not bode well.

And indeed, this uneasy feeling was borne out as Coming of Age trotted out one lame joke after another. The beauty of asking a 20 year old writer to create a comedy about A-level students is that he should know exactly what is funny about the 18-20 set, and should be able to look at his peer group and fashion some decent characters and believable situations, but Tim Dawson has instead put together a sitcom which seems to have been written by a desperate to be cool, middle-aged and middle-class Beeb screenwriter. Not sure of where your plot is going? Chuck in a few sexually predatory teachers and a fat bird, who you can call a "bloater" and "a big fat minger" every other line – that’ll keep the laughs and shock value up, BBC Three are bound to re-commission that! Make sure all of your characters are completely stereotypical, the swot, the tart, the loveable Welsh one, the desperate-to-lose-it one, etc. Even 'Two Pints of Lager', COA's older and wiser channel-mate, gave its characters a bit of depth, but 'Coming of Age' sticks to the Star Trek alien race/Seven Dwarves formula – one personality trait at a time, per person thank you very much.

It is understood that when you commission new writers to do exciting new things, for every 'Mighty Boosh' or 'Gavin and Stacey', there will be a bitterly disappointing waste of the licence-fee payer’s money too. Unfortunately, 'Coming of Age' is wedged firmly into the latter category for this reviewer. Move on, nothing to see here – check out 'The Inbetweeners' instead.