Doon Mackichan

This new sitcom is very silly. Fortunately, it's also snappily written and stars Doon Mackichan, who could make a pair of scissors seem wildly suggestive and uproarious - and frequently does as sharp-tongued hair salon owner Sue.

Tonight, her naughty puppy of a husband, Trev, cooks up a harebrained scheme to solve their money worries: faking his own death so Sue can claim the life insurance. But what really makes this sitcom a cut above are the warts-and-all exchanges with the salon's hapless customers.

Georgia Pritchett wrote the relentlessly bland Life Of Riley for BBC One, so I approached her latest effort Quick Cuts (BBC Four) with trepidation.

The good news? Well, it's not bland: it had Doon Mackichan tripping on funny pills and jokes about comas. The bad news? Where to start...

Semi-improvised, which would explain lines such as 'I once caught my finger caught in a walnut', Quick Cuts is less a sitcom and more a sketch show.

Set in a hairdressing salon staffed by losers and loons, the action quickly cuts back and forth between the daft misadventures of the salon workers and weird one-liners involving customers, all of whom have been hired from Oddballs Are Us.

It's not a bad concept but unless you find the idea of blue wee (Mackichan saddled with a limp running joke) and calling a client 'Mrs Pubehair' funny, then Quick Cuts is about as funny as a slow-motion back, sack and crack.

Doon Mackichan stars as the proprietor of a down-market hair salon in the promising new comedy Quick Cuts. It's not the most original idea in the world for a sitcom, but it is a robust one, with the turnover of customers giving you all kinds of opportunity for comic interludes that are a break from the ensemble dynamic ("Do you ever worry that you might be the anti-Christ," asked one pensive punter).

And it has a very good cast, including Lucinda Dryzek as Becks, the resident airhead and Jessica Gunning as a staff member trying to break a long sexual drought. It's described as semi-improvised in the Radio Times. I do hope that one of the improvised moments was when Mackichan sheared a clean swathe through the hair of her errant boyfriend, Trevor - a genuinely unexpected sight-gag. But if so, Paul Reynolds deserves some kind of medal for staying in character.

BBC4 veers out of its elegantly upholstered bandwidth and into that of little bro BBC3, with this edge-free but fitfully charming new sitcom set in a hairdresser's. Consummate comedian Doon Mackichan is the demented mother hen, heading a brood of gently dysfunctional tropes. It has a regional theatre feel to it, with all the slack timing and weirdly comforting lack of fashion that entails, but there are some nice lines, particularly when Mackichan reads emotions into sets of breast implants: "Arrogant ... pensive ... regretful somehow."

A skewed new sitcom by Georgia Pritchett, who wrote Life of Riley for BBC1 but is in much saltier, funnier form here. Doon Mackichan is Sue, proprietor of a hair salon where the staff struggle to focus on cutting barnets properly. Foolhardy customers come and go, mostly playing stooges as chaos sets in. The scattergun style and lines like "You just frittered away my boobs on a giant chipmunk" could easily lead to a lack of warm authenticity, but don't: the gang feels real. Tonight, Sue hoovers some Mexican tranquillisers, a comic short cut Mackichan brilliantly exploits.

A hairdresser-comedy from the writer of Life of Riley? Quick Cuts is by no means as bad as that suggests, but nor is it as good as it ought to be. As Desmond's and Cutting It have shown, there's no shortage of potential for laughter or melodrama in a salon, but a combination of peculiar editing and floppy, semi-improvised dialogue mean Quick Cuts takes too long to find its comedic or dramatic rhythm, cutting a decent cast (including Doon Mackichan as the loose cannon proprietor) adrift.

But, once the painstakingly set-up scenarios (blind dates, theft, prescription drug abuse) start to pay off, the performances warm up and the lines get funnier - one customer likens a sexual encounter to 'a seal trying to stay on a rock'. There's still some promise here, but it's a very uneven opener.

Let's face it, it's not exactly a golden age for British sitcoms. So when a half-indecent one stumbles along, let's hope it's given time to grow.

As Plebs bowed out last night, I found myself hoping this wasn't the last we'd seen of Shredder, Copier and Water Boy ('Man! Water Man!').

Though the closing episode, Saturnalia, didn't have anything to match my favourite moment of the series - Doon Mackichan downing a banana - it did leave the door gaping open for a second run as the hapless Marcus (aka Copier) still hadn't bagged himself any Cynthia action. You feel for the boy, you really do.

That's down to Tom Rosenthal's endearing turn as Marcus, which started off dangerously close to Inbetweener Will but has happily grown to fill out his own tunic.

Marcus could come off as a whiny whinger but Rosenthal's everyman likeability makes you root for him. With Joel Fry's Stylax, he turns Plebs into a (funny) spin on Two And A Half Men. Only with a short bloke (Ryan Sampson's terrific slave Grumio) instead of a fat kid.

While Plebs hasn't quite lived up to the hype, it's no fault of the superb supporting cast. In particular, it's a pleasure to see Smack the Pony's Doon Mackichan playing Stylax's sex-crazed boss. A virtuoso of the double entendre and salacious glance, she takes suggestiveness to a whole new level when Stylax innocently offers her a bite of an exotic new fruit: "bananae". It's just one of many banana jokes; it may be a while before you can look at your lunchbox without blushing.

Plebs focuses on three no-hopers in the form of office boys Marcus (Tom Rosenthal) and Stylax (Joel Fry) and their slave Grumio (Ryan Sampson). Marcus is a bit of a dreamer and when an attractive new neighbour Cynthia (Sophie Colquhoun) enters his life he falls head over heels in love. The only problem is that Stylax wants them both to go to an orgy and that means trying to convince Cynthia to come with them.

Cue a lot of comic misunderstanding, awkward silences and a very kinky cage game. I believe Plebs was conceived when someone said 'why don't we try and make an Ancient Rome version of The Inbetweeners.' Plebs is filled with the crude humour and obvious jokes that you would expect from an ITV2 sitcom. As much as I like Tom Rosenthal he has been saddled with playing 'the awkward one' which means he has to make a lot of sad faces when Cynthia goes off with another man. Meanwhile Joel Fry, who is so great in Trollied, is the 'horny one' and is always trying to get off with someone while avoiding the advances of his boss (Doon Mackichan). In fact the best performance comes from Ryan Sampson as the bewildered Northern slave Grumio who is forced to route through the bins to find food for his two masters.

While Plebs isn't awful it still felt like a sitcom that was developed with a key demographic in mind rather than just simply created by a talented scriptwriter. In fact, while the state of British drama seems to be very healthy indeed, I don't think there's been one really good UK sitcom since the start of the year.

Doon Mackichan interview

An interview with the comedian and comic actress Doon Mackichan.