Sarah Hooper

Tragedy hits the cul-de-sac tonight with the sudden loss of one of its residents, but it's a tribute to the resilience of Sarah Hooper's amiable series that it does not miss a beat, or suffer a plunge in tone, as it handles the funeral and aftermath. Equally devastating is news about the demolition of the ice rink, inadvertently revealed by the indiscreet vicar. A cast of old hands, from Bobby Ball to Paula Wilcox, ably handle the material, delivered with the very antithesis of EastEnders' morose sturm und drang.

Alongside dialogue about being "twatted with an iron bar", there's Pauline Collins being mumsy and Bobby Ball talking about his toilet issues. Sarah Hooper's suburban comedy drama is painted with such broad brushstrokes the result is a weird hybrid of Shameless and Terry and June. The cast is culled from every soapy drama you've ever seen and joined in the second series by Casualty's Claire Goose who Lisa (Sally Lindsay) befriends at the gym, and George Sampson as Jim's teenage son Gary. Shame it doesn't produce the laughs it should.

Sarah Hooper's series about the perky goings on in a recession-untroubled Mancunian suburb is billed as comedy drama, as if to suggest you're getting two things for the price of one, but in truth it's short on both, unless you count hackneyed sexual intrigue as drama and affected, sub-Coronation Street dialogue as comedy. It's comfort telly, relying on a cast of familiar faces including Pauline Collins, Tommy Ball, Angela Griffin and Sally Lindsay as Lisa, whose over-indulgent lunches lead to speculation that she is pregnant.

Mount Pleasant review

Given that Mount Pleasant is written by Sarah Hooper who cut her teeth on Shameless, you might expect some rough-edged, raucous comedy to emerge from this bog-standard sitcom. You'd be wrong.

Fairly happily married Lisa (Sally Lindsay) lives in suburban Manchester close to her nearest and dearest. She can barely pucker her lips for a kiss from hubby Dan (Daniel Ryan), let alone roll up her sleeves for a scrap with him, without her dotty parents, airhead best mate or brassy boss interrupting.

It's like an upmarket Shameless - on which writer Sarah Hooper cut her teeth - but the characters are even broader. Still, this first episode rattles along pleasantly enough, as a paranoid Lisa frets that Dan has forgotten their tenth anniversary. It's when her boss temporarily moves in, having chucked a feckless boyfriend, that the fun and games really begin.