How to Stay Married

Ten, 8.30pm

An Australian sitcom airing on a commercial network is such a rarity – and no, I refuse to include Here Come the Habibs – that I am firmly on the glass half-full side when it comes to Peter Helliar's new comedy.

The structure is textbook familiar and the set-up of a hassled modern family where the father has stopped working just as the mother has gone back to the office could be lifted from a writers' room identikit, but there's a steady stream of blithe gags, a twisty comic imagination atplay, and the odd salient point being made that elevate this half hour.

Helliar's Greg Butler is a gentler everyman spin on his taste for buffoons: an enthusiastic believer in doing the right thing who invariably ends up doing the wrong thing. Lisa McCune is a strong foil as his wife Em, whose walks through the corridors of the publishing company she's just started at are primed for absurd interruptions. I

n this episode she's entangled with a veteran children's author who's embraced 50 Shades of Grey – the sonorous suggestiveness of John Wood's voice is a thing of comedic beauty. A lot of it is silly, albeit with a good heart, but check how Greg bristles when his daughter's primary school principal hints that having a dad handling family matters instead of a mum is a cause for concern. A little more of that friction would be a bonus. CM