Prime your Sky Boxes for 8pm Friday October 5th on SKY 1, for series 4 of Modern Family is about to commence.

The third season finale saw Gloria (the lovely Sofia Vergara) drop a pregnancy bombshell. It's a safe bet that stocking up on nappies and having another a sprog weren't on (aye) Jay's to-do list.

Co-creator Steve Levitan has teased the thinking behind the plot twist: "Whose lives would it screw up the most?"

In the fourth season opener, Bringing Up Baby, we pick up where we left off. Jay's birthday is upon us again and, as before, he makes it well-known that he wishes to keep it as low key as possible, with no grand gestures or surprises. But, as has become tradition, his family don't listen.

Phil (Ty Burrell) takes Jay on a very unconventional fishing trip with his buddies, and Gloria struggles with how to break the pregnancy news to him. Meanwhile, Haley’s (Sarah Hyland) boyfriend Dylan moves into the Dunphy household temporarily, and Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) decide to look into adopting a cat as they continue to cope with their failed attempt to adopt another child. They could always adopt Jay and Gloria's child if Jay can't get his head around things...

Levitan said of the new season that it "is kind of picking up right where we left off, with Gloria's announcement to the audience that she’s pregnant. Everybody, as you can imagine, has big reactions to this news, and the whole episode is about that." Co-creator Christopher Lloyd added: "Gloria will be gaining weight but not wanting to change any of her outfits, which is funny."

Later in the season, Wendi McLendon-Covey (Bridesmaids) will join the cast in a guest role as one-half of a lesbian couple whose son gets into a fight with Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons) on the first day of kindergarten.

The news series of The Middle also starts at on October 5th at 7.30pm *tumbleweeds* Forget I mentioned it.