The Inbetweeners nets 2.2m viewers

The eagerly anticipated, series three opening episode pulled in 2.247 million viewers, the highest-ever audience for an original commission on E4. According to the Media Guardian, the Bafta-winning sitcom drew a 10.9 per cent share of the audience between 10 and 10.30 pm, beating the News at Ten with 2.049 million viewers and a 9.8 per cent share of the audience. The Inbetweeners episode was E4's highest-rating original show since an 2008 episode of Hollyoaks which was watched by two million viewers. The funny foursome - Jay, Will, Neil, and Simon - narowly missed out on becoming E4's biggest rating-show ever, which remains an episode of Friends which was watched by 2.367 million. Series two of the award-winning comedy launched with 1.3 million viewers in April 2009 and went on to average 1.2 million viewers. This series already looks set to top those figures.

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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.