It’s half past nine on a Friday night, and there’s half an hour till the new series of The League of Gentlemen starts on BBC2. What to do? Watch re-runs of Never Mind The Buzzcocks? Do this dishes? Empty the cat litter tray?

Luckily Channel 4 have saved us from such necessity, by providing us with a new series,Trigger Happy TV. And it’s a belter. This is not the stuff of “you’ll watch it anyway, it’ll do till something better comes along”. This is must see television of a very high quality.

Perhaps I’ve been walking about with blinkers on recently, but I’d heard very little about this show. I’d seen one of the poster ads (this is the man we should not trust), heard vague references on Radio 1 driving to work, and seen the trailer twice. So nothing had prepared me for one of the funniest shows I’d seen for a long time. And I’m talking totally laugh out loud, tears running down your face, stop I’m laughing so much it hurts funny.

The format may at first glance appear to have been done before. Shows which involve us laughing at some punter pranking Joe Public are not unheard of. But Dom Joly, the star ofTrigger Happy TV, manages to exploit this “genre”, with an exquisite sense of humour. In this initial show the majority of the sketches involved the general public, but there were also a couple of “celebrity” appearances. The quality of the programme came from having a plethora of material and good ideas, many of which were in fact very simple. But, as well as the material, the programme makers showed an ability to see the potential for each idea, taking it to it’s furthest point, and then moving on. Perfect.

Very little in Trigger Happy TV disappointed, and it is to be hoped that the rest of the series lives up to this high standard. Even if it doesn’t, it will still be excellent. Watch it and see.