Whether it’s canny timing on the part of the producers or just happy coincidence, it’s comforting to slip back into the higgle-piggledy household headed by mild-mannered Pete (Hugh Dennis) and Sue Brockman (Claire Skinner), two parents at the mercy of their young brood in this partly improvised comedy.

The programme has made families the length and breadth of Blighty breathe a sigh of relief, satisfied that our heirs and spares have been brought up just so. One glance inside the Brockmans’s world is the Noughties equivalent of peering out the lace curtains to see what the Joneses down the road are up to. It gives us a specific kind of guilty pleasure to observe a family hovering dangerously near to Michael Jackson territory on the dysfunctional families barometer (measured, naturally, on a scale from zero to Kardashian).

It is clear that the three Brockman bambini have grown up fast. First-born Jake (Tiger Drew-Honey) is in full teenage mode, thirteen-year-old Ben (Daniel Roche) is nearly as tall as his father and Karen (Ramona Marquez), the baby of the family, is in "big school" and approaching the monosyllabic doldrums of adolescence. First, Jake delivers a master-class on the art of negotiating with parents after mentioning that he has a tattoo. Cue an elegantly delivered list of reasons to justify his “Tibetan peace symbol”, followed by teenage histrionics as he flounces out of the kitchen with: “it’s only a tattoo! It’s not … genocide!” Luckily, Karen is on hand to calm her parents’ nerves after the body-art bombshell. After confessing that she’s been working herself up over a problem “for weeks” and ensuring that she has an audience, she ends the family pow-wow with some insouciant cussing and leaves her stunned parents wondering if they’ve raised Miley Cyrus Mark II.

The children stand out in this episode, proving that although they’ve moved on from Barbie and guinea pigs to Spartacus and One Direction, they can still provide the backbone for most of the comedy. They now hold their own against Skinner and Dennis, who normally temper their offspring's wild antics with enviable composure (barring a pointless running gag with a static jumper). The tables have now turned, with the teenage cohort opting for calm and reasonable conversation to combat the parental death stare. Mummy and daddy Brockman, it might be worth running for cover while you still can: it’s one thing managing preteen primadonnas, but with three teenagers, you may just be outnumbered.