Twisted take on teen trauma

When Malcolm in the Middle (TV3, 7.30pm) started, nearly every critic asked the same question: how long can the show last, given that Frankie Muniz is going to grow up?

The answer so far is four years and Muniz, who plays the eponymous lead role is, like Harry Potter, growing up.

So in tonight's first episode of season four, Malcolm has become a typical teenager - sulky, grumpy and self-centred. He's having an existential crisis.

"If nothing I do ever has any meaning, then I can't care about anything, which makes me feel even worse. How an I supposed to ever feel happy?" he rants to a clown at the zoo.

For little brother Dewey (Erik Per Sullivan), life is decidedly more simple.

"Malcolm, you're at the zoo, you have a popsicle - how can you be unhappy?"

The show began as a heightened retelling of creator Linwood Boomer's childhood. His mother had also walked around the house topless, and he thought it was normal. For a while, anyway.

The dysfunctional family unit is a never-ending theme in US sitcoms, but Malcolm in the Middle's wackiness, clever scripts and camera angles, combined with Malcolm's direct-to-cameras and the charm of Muniz' performance, set a benchmark.

And while it seems that Malcolm's family are weird and crazy, the world around them is also slightly askew - look at older brother Francis' bizarre military school or the so-called Krelboyne (gifted kids) class Malcolm was put into, thereby sealing his fate as a geek forever.

Its only failing is that the family is so often living on a knife edge, driven by the anger of mum Lois (Jane Kaczmarek). It gets tiresome.

Lois and Hal (Bryan Cranston) are constantly fighting and making up (in tonight's episode they argue about her past) and most family outings are an excuse for a public meltdown (they argue in front of a crowd, which contributes with oohs and aahs).

But it's not always like that. Malcolm discovered girls last season, Hal took the boys to a psychiatrist, Francis absconded to Alaska and Dewey got a dog.

And Cranston's excellent work as Hal was finally acknowledged this year with a supporting actor Emmy nomination.

The new season will feature Christopher Lloyd as Hal's cranky father and the return of Cloris Leachman as horrible Grandma Ida (she sues Hal and Lois).

Lois becomes pregnant - mirroring Kaczamarek's pregnancy - and dreams of what life would have been like with girls instead of boys.

The season so far (it hasn't finished in the US yet) was described as shrill and unfocused by Entertainment Weekly. It needed a few more laughs, said EW, suggesting that Boomer, who wrote a lot of the first season, should get back to work.

Maybe the new question will not be how long it can last given that Muniz is growing up, but how long it can last without Boomer.