If there were no other reason to like No Heroics the fact that it was the first attempt by ITV2 to produce an original comedy show would be enough to rouse a cheer. But, thankfully, it also turned out to be a rather good .

Situation comedies are tricky things and often the struggle to establish themselves in their first season as writers, audiences and performers come to terms with the format, relationships and voice of the show. Some sitcoms spring perfectly formed from their creators’ brains – Fawlty Towers, The Office, The Thick of It – but others struggle to be born before hitting their full stride – Blackadder, Only Fools and Horses, Men Behaving Badly.

So the fact that the first season of No Heroics stands up pretty well to a second viewing is a considerable success.

The show’s premise is straightforward. Superheroes are real and perhaps not quite as super as the comics would have us believe. In the opening sequence Timebomb uses his power (to see sixty seconds into the future) to get a jump on his fellow commuters while The Hotness uses his powers to heat up his microwave meal while sitting in front of the television.

No Heroics focuses on the lives of four minor heroes.

The Hotness/Alex (played, obviously, by Nicholas Burns) is more than a little hopeless. His limited heat powers are best utilised heating old people’s homes in the winter, but his ego keeps writing cheques his limited abilities can’t cash. Alex’s nemesis is not a villain but Excelsior/Devlin (played with fantastic smugness by Patrick Baladi) who is Britain’s greatest superhero and a playground bully and all-round dickhead who gets his greatest pleasures in highlighting Alex’s shortcomings.

Electroclash/Sarah (Claire Keelan) can control machines but she refuses to be a hero – in one quite shocking moment she stands by and allows a shopkeeper get shot by a robber because he won’t give her free cigarettes – rebelling against her parents (who are superhero royalty). She’s The Hotness’s ex-girlfriend and their bickering/flirting is the foundation for much of the comedy.

She-Force/Jenny (Rebekah Staton) is “the third strongest woman in the world” and was formally in a super team (Lady Trouble, fnarr!) with Electroclash. Sarah is the only one with a real alter-ego as an ordinary office worker. She is also needy and desperate to find “Mr Right” – leading her to leap on any advance from men, no matter how ill-advised.

Timebomb/Don (James Lance) is a creation of genius. His only power is to see 60 seconds into the future but Timebomb is the perfect piss-take of the modern “dark” superhero (post Millar’s Dark Knight). He wears black leather, he’s gay and wildly promiscuous, he’s a drug addict, he’s a mercenary and he specialises in the cruellest of tortures. He also gets most of the best one-liners and despite being very much the fourth character in group, James Lance frequently steals the scenes with a languidly convincing performance.

Most of the action takes place in The Fortress – a superhero pub with a sign proclaiming: “No Masks, No Powers, No Heroics” defended by Thundermonkey (whose inspired power is to be able to summon a troop of battle-hardened monkeys: “They’ll be here in a couple of hours…”)

The plots of the early episodes tick all the expected boxes. Alex has a hopeless night with a cape-chaser, geeky fans get a bashing when Lady Trouble get back together to meet their fanclub, Alex’s attempts to prove he’s dangerous go badly wrong on a night out with Don and he ends up getting a kicking from a group of strippers, Jenny proves too needy even for a locked-up and desperate super-villain.

The first four episodes are good. They all have unexpected dark moments – Electroclash/Sarah and the shopkeeper, Don’s quick blowjob in the pub toilet, Sarah’s ASBO sidekick – and some good jokes. But it’s the last two that are the most interesting.

Episode five introduces Sarah’s parents as she attempts to annoy them as much as possible by pretending to be back with Alex. But the most interesting part of this episode is the insight into Jenny’s alter-ego and her almost pathetic willingness to put up with the jokes and jibes her colleagues make about superheroes. In her new job she falls for a jokey colleague, but almost at once he reveals he’s a member of a “cape-hater” group and begins a stream of anti-cape jokes, which Jenny sits through and even agrees to go on a cape-hater march with him only to be forced to reveal herself when there is an accident at work. This episode also features Don’s predictably hopeless attempts to deal with his violent streak by visiting a therapy group.

Episode six sees the death of Thundermonkey. A row with Sarah saw Thundermonkey attempt to prove himself against a real supervillain – an attempt that ended badly for him and for all his monkeys. There’s a great wake (where Jenny finds a new role for herself), but Don’s the star of this episode as he is dragged out of retirement to interrogate hapless supervillain Doomball so the heroes can extract their revenge on Thundermonkey’s killer. Meanwhile The Hotness has the chance to step up to the big-leagues with an audition for an elite American superhero team – and he’s willing to do just about anything to get it…

Given that the nearest thing to this that British TV has produced in the past is the entirely dire My Hero, No Heroics is almost unbelievably good. There will be those who find the show’s tendency to fairly crude sexual jokes too harsh for their tastes, but the dark thread that runs throughout the series gives the whole thing a pleasant sharpness. There’s lots of neat jokes for the nerds amongst us (the bar serves everything from Green Lamp Ale to Gin City) but the really encouraging thing about No Heroics is that it gets better as the season progresses and we get more familiar with these characters and their world. That suggests that writer Drewe Pearce might be capable of taking this premise to even higher levels.

He won’t be doing it in America. ABC made a pilot with Freddy Prinze Jnr and then decided to pass – not surprising, really, since robbed of its jokes about blowjobs No Heroics is likely to be a lot less fun.

Will he get the chance to do it in the UK?

I hope so, but the current state of ITV suggests that finding money for a niche comedy that’s very unlikely ever to find a home in the mainstream is going to be difficult.

If you haven’t seen it, I recommend you pick up the DVD. Even if you watched No Heroics when it was broadcast there are a few nice extras – including an in-depth guide to the hidden nerd-friendly jokes (Stanlees Bank, for example) and “Power Hour” interviews with the heroes – though, in truth the extras aren’t up to much. Still, perhaps big sales will encourage ITV to find the money for a second season, so go on, buy it now.