Shaun Dooley

I've been irritated and underwhelmed by new comedy drama Married Single Other, whose decent cast (including the ubiquitous Shaun Dooley) are battling against clunky exposition and a patina of arch wit that seems to make every character sound like every other character ie. arch and witty. That said, I haven't written a piece of drama that's actually been on telly since EastEnders and that's eight years ago now, so maybe I'm not in a position to nitpick.

Romantic comedy drama has always been a precarious juggling trick to pull off, especially in the shadow of the Cold Feet's unassailable reputation. So all credit to writer Peter Souter for even attempting the feat with Married, Single, Other.

An ensemble piece, the show uses three contrasting pairs to explore various aspects of heterosexual, thirty-something, white, Anglo-Saxon coupledom. There is one black character, but so far she has had to conduct her relationship off-camera.

First up are Lillie (Lucy Davis) and Eddie (Shaun Dooley), partners and parents for 16 years, but yet to commit to marriage. Then we meet Babs (Amanda Abbington) and Dickie (Dean Lennox Kelly), practitioners of wildly satisfying sex, but emotionally incompatible and financially insoluble. Finally there's bed-hopping playboy Clint (Ralph Little) cherishing an uncharacteristic devotion to Abbey (Miranda Raison), a beautiful model who is tired of the attentions of shallow men.

So far, so formulaic, but Married, Single, Other really does strain to impress with dialogue that is clever to the point of infuriating. All of the characters, including the teenage cast members, effortlessly exchange the kind of badinage that looks great on paper, but tests an actor's abilities, and patience, to the limit. Davis and Dooley just about pull it off, everybody else struggles to convince.

Little has the hardest time. His casting as a smooth-talking, worldly-wise ad man/lothario is irretrievably undermined by the first shot he features in, with bare chested Clint seen sitting in his bed beneath a giant soft-porn nude photo that would offend the sexual sophistication of a 12-year-old boy. Quite how everybody involved failed to realise that this visual shorthand screamed 'I am emotionally and sexually retarded' is beyond me.

Clint, the show labours to assure us, is flawed, but likeable and this is largely how I feel about Married, Single, Other. There's not enough comedy and too much schmaltz, but episode one did contain several surprises and one genuine shock, with the characters sufficiently engaging to merit sticking with a little longer. Which isn't the advice I'd give to Abbey regarding Clint.

If you can't face the densely plotted and complex Five Days, which starts tonight on BBC1, then you might find some light relief in Married Single Other, with its mix of sentiment and broad comedy. If only it was a bit less coarse and a little bit warmer. In the second episode, Clint (played by Ralf Little), the womaniser in the group of friends, still hasn't heard anything from Abbey, the enigmatic model with the mesmerisingly bad hair extensions. When he does, he decides to throw a dinner party at which he can impress her and, more importantly, persuade his friends to tell her flattering things about him. It all goes badly and predictably awry. His mates slowly tear one another apart as their relationships start to fracture; Babs is furious with her lazy ex-lover, Dickie; while Lillie (a winking, shrugging and twitching Lucy Davis) sounds as if she might be going off the idea of marriage to caring paramedic Eddie (Shaun Dooley).

Married, Single, Other is more obsessed with matrimony than even Iain Duncan Smith. ITV's new six-part comedy drama asks us to consider which is the most natural state for a grown-up - marriage, being single or living together. It is already hurtling towards the conclusion "none of the above". We refer first to Lillie and Eddie, not only because the actors Lucy Davis and Shaun Dooley make them the far most compelling characters, but because they appear to be content, and have been, so we are told several times, for 16 happily unmarried years.

The only tension in the relationship is Eddie's determination to marry Lillie, a desire that manifests itself in ludicrous romantic gestures on her birthdays, on one of which we join them. "May I refer you to the window?" asks Eddie, opening the curtain on a collage of post-it notes that spell "Will You Marry Me?" Eddie, a blameless paramedic and all round good sort, is a sentimentalist, so soppy you hardly realise that towards the end of the episode he has entered the euthanasia debate on the side of do-not-revive.

He is further goaded toward the altar by the neuroses of his 11-year-old son, who in an embellishment the writer Peter Souter should have thought better of, is a child prodigy and speaks in sitcom clever-clever. Joe (Jack Scanlon) is so anxious that his parents do the proper thing he scripts his father's proposal speeches in a scrapbook. Lillie is having none of it, not merely because she is happily in love as she is (which would have done for me) but because she works at a refuge for battered wives. By the end of last night's opener, rather than book Joe into therapy with her mate Babs, she has relented, however. In the Richard Curtis moment we all feared, she proposes to Eddie at her birthday party.

Among the guests are, of course, Babs who is married to a loser called Dickie, although you might want to abbreviate the name. Dickie, an all-night online gambler, get-rich-quick fantasist and biker, is so broadly written that Dean Lennox Kelly does well to make any sense of him at all in his performance. If only Amanda Abbington could have made us see what he sees in the dreary child shrink she plays. Meanwhile, the inveterate Lothario Clint, played by Ralf Little, has fallen for a blonde model called Abbey, played by Miranda Raison who, natch, is not a bimbo after all but well on to him. Clint: "You have only just met me" Abbey: "I have met you a thousand times before."

Where Souter and his executive producer Andy Harries are going dramatically rather than thematically with all this, I am not sure, and maybe that is a good thing. Souter has mentioned Richard Curtis's name and Andy Harries made Cold Feet, still the gold standard for this kind of post-watershed soap. The programme's titles carry the words "married", "single", "other" with boxes next to them and there is more than an element of box ticking in both the piece's premise and execution. The dialogue needs to unclench and the story needs to be given time to grow organically as the characters, one prays, deepen.

This excruciating six-part "romantic comedy drama" lurches from the self-consciously contrived to the hideously mawkish. It revolves around three couples of the sort who only ever appear in bad television dramas. One couple (Amanda Abbington and Dean Lennox Kelly) is unhappily married because the husband is loveable but feckless. Another pair (Lucy Davis and Shaun Dooley) have been in love for ever, but she won't marry him because of what she sees every day at her work in a women's refuge. And the third couple is a smooth advertising type and his model girlfriend (Ralf Little and Miranda Raison). The actors have all been chosen because of their abundance of charm, but nothing they can do will redeem this facile rubbish.

The next Cold Feet they're calling this. No new show wants to wither in the shadow of a giant but there are plenty of worse series to be filed alongside.

As another couple-based ensemble, comparisons are unavoidable. But although this is touted as a comedy-drama there's surprisingly little to laugh at in an otherwise promising opener.

Of the three couples we meet tonight, one pair are on the brink of splitting up, another have just met and the third, Lillie (The Office's Lucy Davis) and Eddie (Shaun Dooley), have been together for 16 years without marrying. He keeps proposing, she keeps saying no. Lillie works in a women's shelter and thinks marriage can tear people apart. But if she thinks domestic violence only happens once you've got a ring on your finger, I'm surprised nobody has put her straight by now.

Dean Lennox Kelly plays Dickie, whose laziness and gambling have finally got too much for his partner Babs (Amanda Abbington). And Spooks fans might struggle to recognise Miranda Raison, who played Jo, with new long hair and brown contact lenses. She's a model called Abbey whose job involves wearing jumpsuits and draping herself over motorbikes at car shows.

Clint (Ralf Little) is smitten and decides to prove he's worthy of her. Perhaps he should try Jimmy Nesbitt's stunt of shoving a rose up his backside and walking the streets naked. It certainly did the trick for Cold Feet.

It's high time we had a decent comedy-drama to get our teeth into, and this new Monday night six-parter looks like being just the job. With a fine cast of instantly recognisable faces, including Ralf Little, Lucy Davis and ex-Spooks star Miranda Raison, it centres on three decidedly different couples, each with their own distinctive hang-ups. Babs (Amanda Abbington) looks set to dump her loveable but hopeless husband Dickie (Dean Lennox Kelly), while Clint (Little) seems incapable of more than a one-night stand - until gorgeous model Abbey (Raison) walks into his life.

As for Eddie (Shaun Dooley), he still can't persuade partner Lillie (Lucy Davis) to marry him, even after 16 years - but can the couple's youngest son seal the deal for him?

There are strong echoes of Cold Feet in this sharply observed six-part romantic comedy - not least because you'd have to look back at least that far to think of an ITV1 comedy that had a more assured, satisfying and generally winning opening episode. The story follows the Cold Feet formula of tracking three couples in and out of their relationships. Tonight's main focus is on childhood sweethearts Lillie and Eddie (Lucy Davis and Shaun Dooley), who despite having two kids and a 16-year relationship, haven't yet done marriage. Not for want of trying by sensitive paramedic Eddie, who proposes every year on Lillie's birthday, only to get just as regularly knocked back. It's a cycle that their doe-eyed 11-year-old Joe (Jack Scanlon) is determined to do something about. If that sounds sweeter than a sugar sandwich, it certainly is in parts, but like much of Married Single Other, it's saved by a good cast. Amanda Abbington is particularly good as Babs, whose frustration with her feckless husband Dickie (Dean Lennox Kelly) threatens to kill a loving marriage, while Ralf Little makes a convincing serial love-rat turned monogamous puppy-dog when he falls for model Abbey (Miranda Raison). It's no mean achievement to flesh out so many characters in a single episode, while also provoking occasional belly laughs and plenty of smiles. Let's hope the quality is sustainable; as it is, this could run and run.

A strangely rare television gem - a genuinely good romcom with no bonnets in it. Issy (Lucy Davis) and Eddie (Shaun Dooley) have been together for 16 years, but she still won't marry him. Babs and Dickie are married, but he spends all her money on failed dotcom ideas. Abbey (Miranda Raison) and Clint (Ralf Little) have just met. So the script has every life stage covered.