Joel Fry

The gimmick of this sitcom, which is ribald without being too dumb, is that it's set in ancient Rome but blatantly has 21sdt-century sensibilities. Tom Rosenthal (Friday Night Dinner) and Joel Fry (who superbly played dimwits in Twenty Twelve and Trollied) are Marcus and Stylax, two losers with dead-end administrative jobs and a chronic lack of fmale attention. With rubbish slave Grumio (Ryan Sampson) taking the place of a feckless pal, they could be from any modern comedy, but transferring the tropes to a period setting gives this one another layer.

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.

Plebs is a bit like the spawn of The Inbetweeners and Up Pompeii, but set in ancient Rome to a soundtrack of ska classics, presumably for added anachronism. Friday Night Dinner's Tom Rosenthal is neurotic, uptight Marcus, Trollied's Joel Fry plays dufus Stylax, and Ryan Sampson is their dull-witted Manc slave Grumio, while Doon Mackichan adds class as the boys' ruthless boss Flavia. The first instalment finds them trading their grocery budget for orgy tickets, while Danny Dyer, of all people, turns up as gladiator Cassius in episode two.

Joel Fry and Ryan Sampson interview

I caught up with two of the stars of the show, Joel Fry who plays Stylax and Ryan Sampson who plays Grumio, after the screening to hear what they had to say about the series...

Rest assured, Plebs is not about Andrew Mitchell and "Plebgate". Instead it might be described as a gentler take on The Inbetweeners - but set in Ancient Rome. At first glance it works because the characters are likeable, the jokes mostly work as does the "yoof" vocabulary. The "plebs" are Marcus (Tom Rosenthal) and Stylax (Joel Fry) and their slave Grumio (Ryan Sampson) and in the opener the neurotic Marcus decides an orgy might be good place to go for a first date.

Behind the scenes: The preparation

Joel Fry, who plays White Van Man's Darren Brown, blogs about the show.

You would not want to put it to her this way, but there is clearly something about Jane Horrocks that says "supermarket". A former star of a long-running Tesco ad, Horrocks stars here in a new sitcom about the employees of Valco supermarket. It's neither surreal nor pathos-filled, instead it forms another addition to producer Ash Atalla's stable of shows that take a slightly edgy look at the utterly commonplace. Mark Addy and cool newcomer Joel Fry are among the other quality comedy talents lurking in the aisles.

The ill-advised nature of mixing business with pleasure is the theme of tonight's White Van Man. The charming but flaky Darren attempts to pull off the feat of working with Olly (Will Mellor) on the house where he's just spent the night with the owner, Lucy - with neither Olly nor Lucy suspecting what he's doing. Emma, meanwhile, pitches one of Olly's business ideas to the errantly-haired Ian (Dexter Fletcher). It's Toast Office - a toast-themed restaurant with free champagne, "so you can toast your toast". It didn't start well, but this has been an endearingly surreal grower, mainly down to Joel Fry as Darren.

Will Mellor must really love Cheshire. After Hollyoaks and Two Pints of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps, this is the third series he's been in that's been set there.

In this new sitcom - filmed around his hometown of Stockport - Will stars as Ollie Curry who's taking over the family handyman business.

While his father plans to spend his retirement watching daytime TV, Ollie's also inherited a hapless assistant, Darren (Joel Fry) who seems to be starring in a movie in his own head called Confessions Of An Odd Job Man.

Tonight, Ollie's first day sees him assaulted, robbed, ripped off and ridiculed and he makes some impressive enemies.

It probably won't make you laugh like an unblocked drain but it's on a par with Mellor's Two Pints Of Lager which will be back for a ninth series this year.

There ought to be mileage in a comedy based around the much maligned white van man, but on early evidence this series fails to make the most of the opportunity. It's not that it's bad (we are not talking Two Pints of Lager..., a sitcom with links to both White Van's main star Will Mellor and writer Adrian Poynton), it's just that's it's not very good - or clever. Mellor plays Ollie, an amiable fool who has to put his dreams of running a restaurant on hold to run his father's handyman business, with the help of an idiotic assistant (Joel Fry).