Tonight's TV - The Cup, BBC Two, 9pm

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Tonight's TV

LIKED The Office? Thought it could have done with more football in it? What do you mean, “no”?

Well, let’s assume that you did: rejoice! Because, my friends, The Cup is here.

A pseudo-documentary on Ashburn United FC’s quest to qualify for the Northern Midlands Under-11s Cup, it manages to succeed in a key area where so many other new BBC Two sitcoms have failed: it doesn’t make me want to grate my face.

Starring Steve Edge (aka Mark’s Nazi-loving friend in Peep Show), what The Cup lacks in originality – obsessive Sunday League dads, harassed football mums, mud being intrinsically funny – it more than makes up for with true sucker-punch jokes.

When the gynaecologist dad of the team’s joint leading scorer puffs, “Who needs rolling hills in the Cotswolds when you have all this?” and the camera zooms to a ­window-view of a grim ­Bolton building site, you groan at the on-the-nose joke – but when he follows it with the wonderfully deadpan “but the move was ­essential, there are more ­vaginas in Bolton”, you ­realise the real punchline was just around the corner.

Or take this marvel from the co-owner of a funeral home who helps manage the league: “Business was cool last year and, of course, we rely on the heat to siphon off some of the pensioners.” It takes a good ear for comedy to realise that “siphon” is the perfect word here, and what makes the line funny.

The Cup also makes good use of what we now must call the Arrested Development ­Interlude, in which the sentence “My daughter is a little competitive”, say, becomes an excuse for a cut-scene of the daughter putting a boot in someone’s face. This makes fun, if unusual, viewing: one minute you’re watching an Office-like downbeat comedy of embarrassment, the next you’re watching the team coach smashing cups and telling 10-year-olds: “If you lose today, you’ll spend the rest of your lives in shame!”

Still, it’s a promising start. If The Cup can add empathy to the mix, we could be on to a winner.

Tonight's TV