Don't look now, but I think something pretty amazing just happened. A new comedy show was broadcast, after an advertising campaign that made it look promising and - wait for it - IT WAS GOOD. Really good in fact! Oh readers, I've been let down so many times before... No Heroics still hurts. But this little gem, based on the childhood memoirs of Simon Doonan, fulfilled its potential, and then some.

This opening episode started in present day New York, with window dresser Simon Doonan firmly placed among the "beautiful people". We soon see, however, that Simon was not born into this environment - the majority of the episode is an extended flashback set in drab early 1990s Reading, where Simon spent his childhood. He's a camp teenager, smart and funny, and hangs out with Kyle (who prefers to be called Kylie), and together they give "unwanted fashion advice" to the locals.

They are two wonderfully warm and charismatic characters, but this show is absolutely packed full of them. Simon's mother, Debbie, is a gregarious, often drunk bottle-blonde, played - one might say against type, but brilliantly - by Peep Show's Olivia Colman, his father is presumably the most intelligent plumber in Reading, and his sister is the ultimate tart with a heart. They're a close family, who dance and argue and genuinely love each other completely.

As well as great characters, this comedy has the added bonus of being made with real care. It is amazing that we can already be nostalgic about the 1990s, but the era is evoked brilliantly through the soundtrack and attention to detail. In this way, there's a slight Spaced-feel to this: it's a heightened reality, with a bright colour palette, flashbacks and flashforwards, and lots of fantasy sequences.

This may not be the sort of comedy to make you fall about on the floor laughing, but it will certainly warm the cockles of your heart (whatever they may be) and that's the sort of comedy I love. Above all, affection and eccentricity are celebrated, and that's a very good thing indeed.