Outnumbered: Very Funny, But ...

The new series of Outnumbered began last night and didn't disappoint, or at least not us: the anarchic fantasy of a boy which ends up with specially trained badgers whose job it is to make sure that people who are buried actually are dead; or a girl (pictured left) who wants to wear a party frock to a funeral because she has been told that the "celebration of his life" is fundamentally a happy occasion.  It is the funniest thing on, at the moment.

At its heart, however, is the great vacuum produced when God is replaced by relativism.  The writers pick out perfectly a world in which everybody defines and constantly redefines the world and relationships in terms of what suits them at the time, and in which social obligations are thought of in terms of what others owe us instead of what we owe them.

A perfect picture of what the urbanised part of this country is, to a large extent, like: pagan, rather than godless; capable of casting bread on the waters, but not necessarily disinterestedly; "dementors in Per Una" as Rita so perfectly described them.

Rita, at least, has found somewhere this tide hasn't reached, at least not yet.  But I must admit that where I am it feels like a tsunami, and there doesn't seem to be much high ground left.