Russell Tovey

Nobody laughs for you in The Job Lot, which is full of those poised silences that are a feature of modern sitcom style, as non sequiturs falter to a stop or a character is left to silently absorb the absurdity of someone else's behaviour. But there is plenty for you to laugh at yourself. Sarah Hadland plays Trish, the job centre manager, in a way that makes you completely forget her more cartoonish performance as Stevie in Miranda, and Russell Tovey appears as Karl, a disenchanted employee who walks out after dealing with a particularly reluctant job seeker, and then walks straight back in again when he catches sight of the beautiful new temp.

There's a nice turn by Jo Enright too as Angela, a surly bureaucratic jobsworth. Most importantly, the comedy lies not in the lines as such but somewhere between what's said and how it's said. "I'd go mad if he wasn't here... I really would," says Trish brightly, commending Karl to the new girl. "I'd self-harm." And then, instead of the grating coercion of mass guffawing you get an awkward silence, as Trish realises she's said too much and the other characters try to think how to fill the gap. In my case, it was filled with a laugh.

The Job Lot is set in a busy West Midlands Job Centre and will focus on the relationships between the people that work there and the people that don't work there, or anywhere else for that matter.

This fly-on-the-wall comedy, set in a Birmingham employment centre, will take a little time to bed in, while we get to know the manager on the brink of a nervous breakdown (Sarah Hadland from Miranda) and the frustrated arts graduate on the dole counter (TV veteran Russell Tovey).

The obstreperous Angela (Jo Enright) was instantly recognisable. She's one of the awkward squad as only British public services can make 'em. Refusing to open the office until exactly 9am, handing out the wrong forms on purpose, and cutting hunks off a block of cheddar with a pair of office scissors: Angela was perfectly observed.

The style and tone of the last half hour of the 'comedy double bill' was almost the antithesis of Vicious.

The Job Lot, starring Him & Her's Russell Tovey was more current in theme and in feel. The comedy was more observational and less in your face. The characters were easier to relate to and the gags more relevant. That's what I found particularly peculiar about the idea of grouping these together. I don't think the Vicious audience is the same audience as The Job Lot.

Although The Job Lot showed more promise in terms of where the characters could go, I wasn't particularly impressed with this either. In lots of ways ITV should be commended for taking a risk on a Monday night but for me it didn't pay off.

The Job Lot is [compared to fellow ITV sitcom Vicious] a gentler, more deadpan prospect from three first-time writers, following the travails of the employees and clients of a Midlands job centre. Sarah Hadland and Russell Tovey do their best in the leads, but it's a familiar premise lacking in one-liners. It does show occasional promise, especially during one protracted sequence unravelling the absurd red tape apparently wrapped around the jobseeking process. But it's good-natured and well performed, if light on laughs.

Sarah Hadland (Miranda's Stevie) and Russell Tovey head up the second of tonight's ITV sitcom double-bill. It's Trollied relocated to a job centre, with manager Trish and pet underling Karl tackling the trials and tribulations of the poor souls stuck on both sides of the counter. Frustrated Karl badly wants out - until a gorgeous temp (Emma Rigby) shows up. While over at front desk, newly-redundant job-seeker Sunil (Teachers' Navin Chowdhry) can't get past miserable jobsworth Angela (Jo Enright).

A comedy set in a job centre in the Midlands - doesn't exactly sound like a bundle of laughs, does it? And while the script doesn't aim to pump out one-liners like Vicious, The Job Lot has sharply observed characters played by a classy ensemble cast. Among them are Sarah Hadland (Stevie from Miranda) as neurotic manager Trish; Russell Tovey as daydreamer Karl, so fed up with his dead-end job he'd almost rather join the dole queue; and Jo Enright as Angela, the Rosemary West of careers advisers.

The shadow of The Office looms over this new sitcom, set in Brownall Job Centre in the West Midlands, and it largely delivers, thanks to a cracking script and some winning performances. Brittle, nervy Trish (Miranda star Sarah Hadland) runs the office, aided by frustrated graduate Karl (Russell Tovey), and the marvellously dour Angela (Life's Too Short's Jo Enright), among the regular staff and jobseekers. This week sees a display of petty bureaucracy from Angela, while Karl uses his degree in an ill-judged manner.

I feel ever so sorry for ITV's second new sitcom of the night for having to follow a tough act like Vicious... The Job Lot, set in a job centre don'tcha know, can't help but pale in comparison to the savage brilliance of Ian McKellen and Co.

And that's a shame because while it's not going to win any prizes for originality (League Of Gentlemen's job-seeker sketches set the bar pretty high on that score), it's a perfectly respectable addition to the clutch of office-based sitcoms.

Plus it's from Big Talk, the company that gave us Spaced, Black Books, Rev, Friday Night Dinner and Him & Her, so it knows about sitcoms.

Sarah Hadland, Russell Tovey, Martin Marquez and Emma Rigby are among the staff turning the unemployed into the funemployed, with varying degrees of success.

But the biggest surprise of the night must be actress Sophie McShera being cast as a job-seeker who's turned being work-shy into a something of a full-time career. It's Downton's Daisy Mason as you've never seen her before.

The Job Lot, which, while nowhere near as sharp as Vicious, is a perfectly amiable and amusing sitcom set in a drab job centre (is there such a thing as a bright, welcoming job centre?).

Despite being a single-camera comedy with no laugh-track, it's essentially a traditional sitcom populated by dysfunctional characters and daffy situations. It is, however, blatantly influenced by The Office, not because it's a workplace comedy - Gervais and Merchant didn't invent that genre - but because of the exceedingly Tim-like lead played by Russell Tovey. A bright, likeable everyman trapped in a job he detests - his feelings for an attractive female colleague stop him from leaving - the similarity is compounded by the fact that Tovey appears to have partially based his acting style on Martin Freeman.

While Tim-bot 2000 is mildly distracting, he doesn't detract overall from a show which, given the danger inherent in its recession-fuelled premise, mercifully refrains from sneering at the unemployed. Granted, one of the regular job-seekers is portrayed as a harmless oddball, but it's significant that the villain of the piece is a rude, sadistic and actively obstructive job centre employee played by the excellent Jo Enright.

This character has an obvious antecedent in the monstrous Pauline from The League of Gentleman. She also shares a few genes with Little Britain's "Computer says 'No'" grotesque. And yet despite these visible origins, Enright imbues her with a distinctive, deadpan venom.

What this all adds up to is a derivative yet serviceable sitcom with a smattering of potential. But it undoubtedly succeeds in being an ITV sitcom that's Not Appalling. I still can't quite believe it and Vicious exist at all.

Interview: Russell Tovey's work experience

The star of ITV's new sitcom The Job Lot tells Gerard Gilbert of his rise to fame.