Holly Aird

Scenes Of A Sexual Nature review

Ewan McGregor, Tom Hardy and Sophie Okonedo are big names doing small roles in this pleasant 2006 portmanteau film.

Apparently Monday Monday has spent a couple of years gathering dust on ITV Drama's shelf prior to broadcast. It is difficult to understand why, as this eight-part comedy drama is nothing if not likeable.

An ensemble piece, Monday Monday follows the lives and loves of white collar staff at a recently relocated supermarket chain.

It is hardly the most innovative or challenging of dramas, but it has charm and humour to spare and a top notch cast that includes Holly Aird, Jenny Agutter and Fay Ripley. Miranda Hart, comedy actress du jour, has a minor role, which gives you an idea of how long ago the series was made.

Ripley, an actress I have developed an irrational aversion to, is actually very good as Christine, an ex-alcoholic working in human resources who is totally lacking in any resources of her own.

Despite every fibre of its being screaming "I am but a competent ITV comedy-drama", Monday Monday is pretty likable. In this second episode Fay Ripley's Christine is in AA and trying to take back control of her working life. That's all well and good, except that she has to deal with a sexual harassment claim against resident office hunk Steven, who also happens to be sleeping with scary chief operating officer Alyson. Awkward. It's so light as to be weightless, but with a great cast (featuring Jenny Agutter, Holly Aird and the charming Morven Christie) it's definitely watchable.

Fay Ripley (star of Cold Feet and Reggie Perrin) is the best thing about this new series set in the head office of supermarket chain Butterworth's.

As the alcoholic, incompetent head of Human Resources the only reason why she still has a job must be that she's the one in charge of all the hiring and firing. But despite considerable odds, Ripley manages to make an unlikeable and unlikely character human and watchable.

The company has relocated from the capital to Leeds, and a new boss has been brought in to oversee the old boss, but that's where all similarities with The Office end as this only serves up broad cliches of office life.

You'll spot Jenny Agutter as a Battenburg-baking secretary and you might recognise Tom Ellis - Oliver Cousins in EastEnders.

He was the doctor who fell in love with Little Mo and then left Walford for a new job in Leeds. Spookily, that's exactly where Monday Monday is set and his character Steven is the tastiest item on Butterworth's stocklist, being tussled over by his own boss (Holly Aird) and put-upon PA, Sally.

Fay Ripley plays a drunken, shambolic mess of a human being in this likeable if lightweight comedy-drama series.

She's Christine Frances, head of human resources at the HQ of a struggling supermarket chain, holding things together only thanks to her trusty yet savagely abused PA, Sally (played by Morven Christie) - and looking as if she's finally facing the chop when a ruthlessly ambitious management troubleshooter (Holly Aird) comes to shake the firm up.

Sally herself, meanwhile, has fallen for hunky Steven (Tom Ellis), the arrogant guy who's personal assistant to this new bigwig - only to find he and bossy-drawers have more than just a working relationship.

A strong cast also includes Jenny Agutter, Neil Stuke, Peter Wight and Saikat Ahamed.

I don't know. You wait years for a dismally unfunny, fatuous series about personal assistants, then two come along at once. Monday Monday joins the witless pantheon (alongside BBC3's Personal Affairs) and stars Fay Ripley as the inept, alcoholic head of human resources whose secretary does all the work. I think we are meant to find the whole idea of human resources intrinsically absolutely hilarious, but we've got to be given something to laugh at. Ripley's character sleeping off a hangover in her car is not, in itself, funny. The cast is good, but ill-served, particularly Holly Aird as a tough new boss who's having an affair with her empty bimbo of a male secretary. The dialogue is pitiful - any series that makes an off-colour gag based on the word "stuffing" deserves to go back to the 1970s where it belongs.

The ratings for this new series will not be great, let's face it - and that's only in part to having to compete with The Street. This comedy drama set in a supermarket head office's HR department wi... oh, sorry, I must have dozed off. Fay Ripley stars as the alcoholic department boss, apparently. Backed up by a cast including Holly Aird, Neil Stuke and Miranda Hart, I can only hope that the show is better than all the pre-publicity suggests.