When a new comedy series starts on any channel nowadays, let alone BBC Three, I've found that it's sensible - if a little sad - not to get your hopes up too high. I've been let down too many times before, and the ratio of hits to misses recently has not been great. I was happy to find, then, that Summer Heights High has real potential.

You might think, seeing as though The Office aced the genre to such an extent, that comedy writers would stay away from mockumentaries for fear of being unfavourably compared to it, but Chris Lilley, who's baby this is, has gone for it with real gusto. Summer Heights High is a mockumentary following a term at a tough Australian public (state) school, which concentrates particularly on three characters, all played by Lilley himself.

The character which gets you interested in this show is, without a doubt, Greg Gregson, or Mr G to the kids. He's an outrageous luvvie who works in the drama department and uses the education system to vent his need to dance, act and sing. He says that he could have been a professional dancer, but you suspect that moving to education wasn't entirely his own decision. He's not head of department, but acts like it, and can't stand the fact that they're doing something as dull and traditional as Anything Goes as the end of year musical - he's much more at home with his own work, such as Ikea The Musical, and Tsunamarama, a musical about the Asian tsunami using the works of Bananarama. Obviously.

Lilley's second character is Ja'mie - no that's not a typo, that's her name. She's at Summer Heights on an exchange programme from the local all-girls private school, and is "the smartest non-Asian in Year 11." She's a total snob, although she pretends to understand why some kids aren't as all-round wonderful as she is ("it's not their fault"), and it has to be said she probably doesn't make the best first impression when she leads an assembly to introduce herself: "Wife beaters and rapists are nearly all public-school educated", she says. "No offence, it's the truth."

Finally, there's Jonah, school bully extraordinaire. He's disruptive, violent, unbelievably foul mouthed to absolutely everybody, and completely uninterested in education. He's been in three schools in 18 months (expelled from the previous two, naturally), but here he's got Doug behind him - the no-nonsense student welfare rep who is tough with him, but recognises the effects of a tough background when he sees them. I've got a feeling that, unlike Ja'mie, we might see Jonah take something on a journey over the course of this series.

The attention to detail in this show makes it a real joy to watch, even if you don't laugh out loud constantly. It's packed with quotes that could easily become classics, and, most important of all, it has a talented comedian at the helm who clearly has a real vision for what he wants his show to be. It's too early to say whether this will be the sort of comedy I'll buy on DVD and enjoy time and again, but I'm more than happy to watch the whole series and find out.