Jason Watkins

Trollied may come from the school of Shameless - via director Paul Walker and lead writer Julie Rutterford - but it's a very different can of beans. Set in a budget supermarket in the North, it offers gentle humour and finds amusement in the familiar and the peculiar. Broad-based and character-led, the opening double bill offers promise of good things to come, with a cast that includes the fabulous Jane Horrocks as a prissy and insecure interim deputy manager, Mark Addy as the supermarket butcher, and Jason Watkins as exasperated manager Gavin.

Sky1's really started amping up its original content recently and the latest result is brand new comedy Trollied. Is this going to be the supermarkets' answer to The Office? It's hard to tell straight away, but the cast is certainly strong - the fabulously expressive Jane Horrocks takes her place alongside Mark Addy who, fresh from being a king on Game of Thrones, becomes a butcher who really knows his bacon. Jason Watkins, Chanel Cresswell and Nick Blood are among the other stars joining the lineup at budget store Valco, so settle in for a double bill (or, um, buy one, get one free) and we'll see if it gets us rolling in the aisles (it's got to do better than that pun, for sure).

"Three ex-Ravenhill patients dead in the same month Coincidence? I don't think so," says Hoyti Toyti shopkeeper Peter (a swishingly camp turn from Jason Watkins, who played Herrick in Being Human). He's soon on the scent of the assassin and sharing with Tealeaf (Daniel Kaluuya) a dark secret in his shop basement. So the plot tightens in this dance of the macabre, where there's dubious pleasure in watching just how far Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton will go in testing their audience's bad taste threshold. A literal bloodbath involving Maureen Sowerbutts, a Haringey social worker, a breadknife and bin liners makes for queasy but irresistible viewing. A sequence with Mr Jelly and David running amok in a home for the bewildered achieves high farce. Hattie (Pemberton in pink lippy) turning all Kathy Bates in Misery and forcing a snog on gay hubby Shahrouz should make some punters squirm, but it was her crass remarks to a rape victim that ultimately crossed the line for me. Still, full marks for audacity.