The relationship between the British and their sitcoms is like a teenage love affair - filled with rushes of passion and moments of extreme loathing. No other programme genre is analysed with such cataclysmic predictions of doom or rapturous assurances of our talent and supremacy, depending on how funny last night’s episodes were. If a few costume dramas aren’t quite up to scratch, we don’t get essays from actors and writers predicting the death of the form. If the X Factor contestants are more irritating than usual, commentators never discuss the camera angle, assuring readers that the single camera or the handheld camera is over now. When it comes to sitcoms, we are a nation of cultural critics, technical advisers, script consult-ants and casting directors.

Given that I’m as guilty as, if not guiltier than, the rest, it’s worth stating at the top that this is one of the “rapturous assurance” pieces. For the first three months of this year, at least, we are back on top and it’s safe to fall in love again. Which, coincidentally, is what most of these sitcoms seem to be about.

Channel 4, in particular, is going down the romcom road with Plus One, starting on Friday, and Free Agents, on air in February.Plus One stars Daniel Mays as Rob and Duncan James - of the boyband Blue - as himself. The show is about a bloke whose girlfriend leaves him for, well, Duncan from Blue. Rob has to get a plus-one for the wedding, and the six-parter follows his hapless attempts to secure a stunner. “He’s heartbroken, and it’s all made much worse by the fact that his ex is on the cover of Heat every week and has the wedding build-up broadcast on T4,” Mays says. “He keeps aiming higher and higher. All the time, his lovely workmate Laura is right in front of his eyes, but he can’t see it.”

Plus One came from a showcase of six sitcom pilots broadcast on Channel 4 last November. The competition also produced Free Agents, starring Anthony Head from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sharon Horgan from Pulling and Stephen Mangan from Green Wing. “It’s a show about successful people holding down a career in a glamorous talent agency while their lives are falling apart,” explains the producer Nira Park. “We shot on location in and around Soho, with lots of walking and talking. Someone described it as ‘a Soho Annie Hall’.”

BBC1, meanwhile, has Life of Riley, with Caroline Quentin as divorcée mum Rosie, who marries divorcé dad Jim and has to cope with children, stepchildren, inlaws, ex-in-laws and other similar assaults - sort of Outnumbered crossed with My Family. Following shortly after, there’sThe Old Guys, from Peep Show writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, about two elderly delinquents lusting after their sexy neighbour.

On BBC2, there’s Psychoville, from The League of Gentlemen’s Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pem-berton, which casts Dawn French and Christopher Biggins in a dark comedy mystery - like Scooby-Doo meets Hammer House of Horror. BBC3 follows the ghoulish theme withBeing Human, piloted last year, about a werewolf, a ghost and a vampire sharing a flat.

Astonishingly, even ITV - which last had a decent sitcom. . . well, it must have had one at some point - is delivering the goods. Last year’s ITV2 hit No Heroics, about superheroes bitching in a pub, is moving onto primetime ITV1, while its host channel is following up with FM at the end of February. It’s set in a thinly disguised version of London’s indie music station XFM, with Chris O’Dowd as Lindsay Carol, a bum-bling DJ who fails to hang out with the cool bands who appear on his show, wears disastrous jeans and desperately tries to sleep with the likes of Miquita Oliver.

Indeed, rather like Plus One and Charlie Brooker’s zombies-attack-the-Big-Brother-house comedy, Dead Set - which transfers from E4 to Channel 4 on Tuesday and has Davina McCall as one of the undead - FM forms its own sitcom subset in having a host of celebrities playing themselves. The Charlatans, Ladyhawke, the Wombats, Sway and Guillemots all appear - not just playing live, but weaving into the plots.

“There’s so much crossover between comedy and rock’n’roll at the moment, we thought we’d ask the bands if they wanted to get more involved in the show, and they all did,” explains Ian Curtis, who created FM with his writing partner, Oliver Lansley.

Of course, a script can take up to two years to develop from idea to screen, so a screen filled with feelgood comedy as the long, cold, recession-hit winter of 2009 begins its bleak tramp through January is purely a coincidence - but it’s a happy one. Comedy ultimately defies the analysis we subject it to, and all that’s left is that most British of philosophies: you’ve got to laugh.

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