Outnumbered, TV review: Brockman family will be missed

Outnumbered, starring Daniel Roche, Hugh Dennis, Tyger Drew-Honey, Ramona Marquez and Claire Skinner (Colin Hutton/BBC)

As Outnumbered creaks towards it finale next week, it's clear the show is long past its early peak and though some of its gags are written on fumes (Pete can't work out predictive texting; an IT man suggests turning a computer on and off again) it still has enough moments to raise a smile.

A lot of those moments came from Rebecca Front as Karen's head teacher. Karen – having compiled her own list of suggestions as to how to improve the school – was fundamentally schooled by her teacher.

Front's two best lines taking in classic children's literature. On Roald Dahl's kids-vs-adult narrative: "He's probably ruined more children's lives than polio." And, Lord of the Flies: "That's what happen when children make the rules… corpses everywhere."

Very good.

As was the structure of the episode – each of the Brockmans were kept apart until the end of the half hour, communicating only via a network of lost, broken and borrowed mobile phones. It had me mumbling "buy a new phone, then, mate" at dad Pete, but even that was resolved by the end of the episode as Hugh Dennis jumped up and down on his old device. Not long until they all fly the nest.

We'll miss them.