IT’S always rubbish to lose a decent American series when the axe falls mid-run – but in one instance in recent memory, the pain is still raw, and the question is still begged: Why Arrested Development? WHY?!

It was near the knuckle, to be fair. One of its best loved lines was “are you forgetting that I was a professional twice over, an analyst and a therapist – the world's first analrapist”, after all. Like Family Guy, it was the kind of subversive comedy we don’t like to think the American mainstream can manage.

Arrested Development was ditched halfway through its third season in the States in 2006, leaving the show, which was always stuffed to burst with tenuous plotlines, falling over itself to tie up its ever more incredulous loose ends.

At once a lightning-fast comedy speedball of satire, stupidity, send-up and slapstick, it married inspired casting, absurdly observed characters and awesomely crafted gags.

The story of the millionaire Bluth family, whose lavish lifestyle is thrown into turmoil when patriarch George (Jeffrey Tambor – the Larry Sanders Show) is imprisoned for embezzlement, and, as it turns out, “light treason”, which brings many an anti-Bush joke into play.

This leaves son Michael (Jason Bateman) in charge of the Bluth Company and the relatives that come with, who are having a hard time understanding they’re no longer rich – his bitter alcoholic mother Lucille, who hates her children; his self obsessed twin sister Lindsay (Portia de Rossi), her unwittingly gay husband Tobias and their daughter; his brothers, crap magician Gob, and mommy’s boy Buster; as well as trying to single handedly raise his own son, George Michael (the wonderfully awkward Michael Cera of Superbad).

This is to say nothing of the cameos it could pull in – Liza Minelli as Lucille 2, best friend and rival to the Bluth matriarch of the same name; Charlize Theron as a mentally challenged English girl from the “Wee Britain” district of California; Scott ‘Chachi’ Biao as Bob Loblaw, the attorney with the Law Blog; and Henry ‘Fonz’ Winkler as the Bluth’s deviant lawyer to name just a few, as well as one-offs from the likes of Martin Short, Zach Braff and Ben Stiller.

Twentieth Century Fox has yanked down the clips available on Youtube (boo), but have a look at http://arresteddevelopment.msn.com/ (no www) for clips and full eps – it is likely to be the most amusing thing you do all day.

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