After watching new series Small Prophets I wanted to catch up on Dinosaur to compare them. Like Small Prophets, the second series of Ashley Storrie's comedy about love, autism and paleontology is also all available on iPlayer. In some ways the shows are very similar, in some ways they are very different.

Both, for example, star someone who is heavily involved behind the scenes too. Mackenzie Crook created Small Prophets and appears in it though isn't the star, Ashley Storrie co-created Dinosaur (with Matilda Curtis) and very much stars in it. Storrie plays Nina. When we meet her again at the start of the second series she is on a paleontology dig on the Isle of Wight and having the time of her life discovering metazoic dung beetles.

So when she has the chance of staying on in her dream job she is conflicted. Back in her hometown of Glasgow there's the scent of romance in the air with Lee (Lorn Macdonald), who runs the coffee stall in the park outside Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum where she worked..

Eventually she decides to head home and after a mad dash to the precise midpoint between Isle of Wight and Glasgow (she's autistic, remember?) there's a will they won't they meet up? She wants to resume her old life, but things are complicated. Various situations have changed. Most notably American dig colleague Clayton (Hyoie O'Grady) turns up from the Isle of Wight too, having landed a new job in Glasgow. And he seems rather smitten with Nina. Where does that leave Lee? Love trial alert! 

There's a definite charm to Dinosaur, but a different kind of charm to Small Prophets. Here the pace is often frantic, maybe reflecting the state of Nina's autistic mind. When she gets stressed at work she has to drop everything and go on an "autism walk" to clear her head. By contrast Small Prophets is almost eerily calm and gentle at times.

Meanwhile Lee is revealing hidden talents on an open mic night when he does a brief musical set and turns out to have a showstopping voice, touching Nina with the line “It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as what you do is true.”. Will this win her over or will Clayton worm his way further into her affections? 

Neither comedy fits comfortably into the sitcom format. They are both really comedy dramas, with the humour coming from the characterisations rather than actual jokes. They will both make you smile rather than laugh out loud. Sometime Storrie – who looks remarkably like her mother, late comedian Janey Godley – carries Dinosaur single-handedly, luckily she is very good at it. Dinosaur is very much worth digging into.

Dinosaur, BBC Three, Saturdays at 10pm and on iPlayer now followed by a release on Hulu later this month.