Natasha Kaplinsky started out as one; so did Zoë Ball. Being a runner at a TV station or production company is often derided as one of the hardest entry-level jobs there is – where workers are paid a pittance to do the tasks that no one else wants to. Sam King is one such runner and the star of Bebo’s The Secret World of Sam King.

“I deliver post because I love music. I make coffee because I’m passionate about music,” so says Sam King, the scrappy (fictional) teenage runner with the clipped faux-South London vowels at Universal Records. “Music is my life.” And girls. And nipping off to V Festival to follow famous bands around. And, of course, product placement.

Yes, as some reviewers have already pointed out, there is an awful lot of product placement on The Secret World of Sam King. And not in slick, aspirational 007 style. Gratuitous plugs for Sony Ericsson phones and strategically-placed posters advertising bands from the Universal roster, more in line with the embarrassing scene in Wayne’s World where Noah Vanderhoff, Wayne’s new sponsor and the owner of Noah’s Arcades, is interviewed about the difference between Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. Shameless.

But if that’s what it takes to get an internet show looking this good, then so be it. I’m forever complaining that almost all the decent, or in fact, most web series in existence, are made in the US. And finally, we have one produced right here in England – slickly edited and encapsulating a certain kind of Englishness, with English celebrities such as George Sampson and Big Brother’s Nikki Grahame and everything – and everyone’s complaining about where the money’s coming from.

Granted, unless you’re the kind of person that actually uses Bebo – which probably means you’re also 13 and into floppy-haired pubescent indie kids – it won’t be to your taste; it’s a bit like one of the cheesier segments on CBBC. But for its target audience, it really works. And it’s just great to have the internet actually competing with television on this side of the Atlantic.

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