Broken Biscuits

The second of the new Comedy Playhouse season is written by The Royle Family's Craig Cash and Phil Mealey. Five seemingly disparate groups of people discuss their lives to camera, including Brenda and Roger, who run the "Brenroger" B&B, elderly couple Milton and Pearl, fixated with their smoke alarm, and brothers Martin and Tom. It's Alan Bennett with more swearing and a decent cast (Timothy West, Alison Steadman), but ultimately not quite as touching, clever or as funny as it thinks it is.

This is the second episode in the current revival of The Comedy Playhouse where new comedies are put before us and maybe one of them will be made into a series. This is how several famous sitcoms such as Steptoe & Son and Last of the Summer Wine were born.

I adored last week's offering, Hospital People, but this week's is a vastly different type of humour. Hospital People was anarchic and surreal, done in the well-known "mockumentary" style where several characters who worked in a hospital were interviewed about their work. All of them were oddballs. Broken Biscuits is far more measured and sedate and the characters more realistic. Co-written by the comedian Craig Cash, it features several people who speak directly to the camera. There is the old couple who're having bother with their smoke alarm and who disapprove of their son's wife; she's far too concerned with shopping and even has John Lewis on speed-dial. There is a cranky old couple who run a guest house, thinking they're a cut above their rivals because they take care to place a single Rolo on the pillows and always pick the hairs off the soap. Gradually their "broken" stories merge and things become slightly more caustic towards the end.