Steve Coogan and Henry Normal’s Baby Cow production company can be relied upon to produce some brilliant, off-beat comedy, but they really hit the big time when Gavin And Stacey became a BAFTA-winning success. So now when any new comedy comes along bearing the Baby Cow moniker, it’s time to sit up and notice. Home Time is the latest off the conveyor belt.

Related: Our Gavin And Stacey section.

The way Gavin And Stacey worked was by fusing together mainstream humour and the traditional sitcom set-up with a fresh and original scenario and a few gently subversive undercurrents. If anything Home Time pushes the boat out even further.

It stars Ideal’s Emma Fryer as 29-year-old Becky, a woman who has just come home after a 12-year odyssey trying to ‘find herself’. The problem with with Becky’s absence was that days before her 18th birthday she decided to not tell anyone she was going to leave.

And now she’s back in her home town of Coventry and sleeping in her old teenage single bed, with no clothes except for her mid-1990s wardrobe, confronted with posters of Blur, Oasis and, erm, Brian Harvey and her old diary.

Then it’s a process of reacquainting herself with life in Cov, her overbearing mother (who’s just as surprised as Becky for her to be back), her near-silent dad and a group of dysfunctional friends who are still bitter at her for leaving so suddenly. There’s a Ruth Badger-style wannabe, a post-rave casualty (played by Pulling’s Rebekah Staton) and a gossip.

So that’s the set-up, and I’m pleased to report that Home Time could well be a winner. Her friends are fun and stupid, it’s got that same colloquial feel as Gavin & Stacey (substitute Barry Island for Coventry… how nice it is to see something based in the West Midlands for a change. I come from a town just south of Coventry and even though it is a bit of a shed it’s about bloody time this area of the country represented), and there’s plenty of little Cov phrases and sayings. I’m not saying that these phrases like ‘bab’ will become as popular as ‘what’s occurring’, but this has potential.

It’s not laugh-out-loud funny all the time, and I do wonder whether it has the mainstream appeal. But it has potential, real potential. Some lovely sight gags, and some of the same, warm humour as G&S, but, judging by the first episode, more of an edge.

Look out for it on BBC Two in the second week of August.