My in-laws went to Portland, Oregon and hated it. They said it was full of strange drop-out hippy types and blokes with beards wearing flannel shirts drinking out of bottles in paper bags.

Based on clips of Portlandia, Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen’s new comedy sketch show, they were like totally missing the point. They had stumbled onto a city were the ‘90s has never gone away. The blokes with beards weren’t hobos, they were graphic designers or performance artists, skillfully challenging society’s norms and values by dressing like hobos. The bottle in the bag was organic carrot and echinacea juice, made at a local raw food co-op using carrots that had joyfully leapt out of the ground and into the juicer.

Portlandia premiered on US network IFC on 21st January; whether it will reach us here in the UK is unknown. Though if I were a Channel 4 exec., I’d be opening up my cheque book sharpish.

Brownstein (of Sleater-Kinney fame [if you can call it that]) and Fred Armisen (a guy you’ll recognise but won’t be sure how) are an established comedy duo going by the name of Thunder Ant.  They find ripe comic material in spoofing the lives of Portland’s oddball hipsters, poseurs, artists and left-wing idealists.

And, my gosh and golly, Portlandia is funny.

The show is developed from a series of short clips on the Thunder Ant website called “Feminist Bookstore” (typical quote: “every time you point, I see a penis”). With their confused understanding of feminism and contempt for everyone but themselves, the staff of “Women and Women First”, Toni and Candace, succeed in alienating customers and never selling a single book.

The Feminist Bookstore crops up in Portlandia alongside a host of new characters and hilarious scenarios.

The “Put a Bird on It”* sketch neatly sums up the rise of a pseudo-crafty/creative culture that is clearly visible as far away from Portland as our very own Birmingham. The “Adult Hide and Seek League” is predictably silly. Whilst the musical number “Portland Dream of the ‘90s” is reminiscent of Flight of the Conchords at their very best.

Mocking, silly and scarily near the mark, this is a loving attack on the sort of people who worship at the altar of counter-culture. The target audience may well see elements of themselves in the characters; for me, it is the bangs and hair twiddling of Toni in the bookstore sketches.

An interesting side note is that the only real UK media interest so far has come from feminist circles. I first read about the show in The Guardian’s bang-on “The view from a broad” column by Laura Barton. Does this mean that the show is already being forced into a box labelled “niche appeal”, just because one of the stars also fronts a Riot Grrrl indie band? (Candace and Toni would not be amused.)

I really hope not, this show is too good for that.

*My in-laws had a conversation with a guy in Portland who carried a bird around with him. True story. Imagine it was kind of like Kes but with a flannel shirt and an American accent.