As a fully paid up member of the club, I’m predisposed to like characters called Pete or Peter, but for every funny/cool/heroic Parker and Venkman there is an equivalent dolt-Pete to sully the good name.

You can now add to this list of losers, Pete, the eponymous protagonist of Channel 4’s Rafe Spall starring sitcom-with-a-twist, Pete Versus Life.

This Pete is a laddish, struggling sports journalist everyman. He’s not terribly bright and he talks far too much, a combination that sees him ruining perfectly good relationships, scuppering job opportunities and generally getting himself into all kinds of scrapes.

There is an element of farce to Pete Vs Life, a bit of the ever-popular comedy of embarrassment and a soupçon of semi-ironic political incorrectness. Pete himself is, despite his blokey, at odds with the modern world, aren’t-birds-mental attitude, a fairly loveable sort of loser. He’s an incompetent, selfish buffoon obviously, but Spall injects a bit of idiot charm into the character.

The bit that sets Pete Vs Life apart from the many other comedies in the same vein is the introduction of two sports commentators. These two authentically represented broadcasters (one a pure professional, the other a cliché spouting pundit) observe and pass judgement, like a modern Greek chorus, on Pete’s various bloopers and indiscretions, aided by flashy Sky Sports style graphics and captions. Because Pete is a sports journalist, see?

It’s a gimmick admittedly, but a fairly productive one, which takes cues from the successes of both Come Dine With Me (Dave Lamb’s spikey voice-over) and the interior monologues of Peep Show.

This device was featured too heavily in the first couple of episodes, in an effort to establish the quirk and to give Pete Vs Life a clear identity most likely, but it has since been phased out and is now used sparingly and pretty succinctly.

Pete Versus Life is very light, but each episode so far has had a couple of big, crude laughs. Pete is a simple cypher of a character, and most of the jokes are very well signposted, but on a Friday night after a week at the coal face I’d much watch this than Roger and Val Have Just Got In.

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