Lunch Monkeys

The so-so sitcom revolving around the slacker employees of a personal injury law firm concludes with the company's 30th anniversary. There's not much to celebrate: business is bad for Mike (Nigel Havers) and he's also lost his wife. Meanwhile, the gossiping monkeys make a bad impression when the daughter of Mike's silent partner pays an unexpected visit and decides changes are needed.

Review: Lunch Monkeys - BBC3

David Isaac's comedy returns for its second outing on the BBC. Amusing in places, but could somebody PLEASE do some work?

Review: Silly, Predictable...But You'll Laugh

The first series of Lunch Monkeys didn't exactly set tellyland's criticsphere alight ("If you find incontinence, phantom shitters and armpit-farts the acme of wit, you're in for a treat" said Tom Sutcliffe of The Independent) but, undeterred by that and average viewing figures, BBC3 took a chance and commissioned a second series of the office based sitcom last year.

Chris Hannon interview

The world of TV is almost always far less glamorous than you might think. Just ask Lunch Monkeys star Chris Hannon.

A quick chat with Nigel Havers

Nigel Havers tells us why he'd love to do a costume drama, hanging out with Mick Jagger, and his return to comedy in BBC3's Lunch Monkeys.

The comedy set in the postroom of a "no-win, no-fee" law firm, and starring Nigel Havers as a long-suffering boss, returns for a second series. Havers' character spends his days despairing of his inept employees - or would do if he wasn't permanently distracted by the shenanigans of his PA, who's determined to sleep her way to the top. Down in the basement, his underlings flirt and fight, while unsorted mail stacks up around them. They're an amusing if not exactly side-splitting bunch: highly strung Tania; wannabe artist Kenny; workshy Darrel, still hopelessly in love with a still unimpressed Shelley; and dopey Asif, who has neglected to tell his parents that he's a postman, not a hotshot lawyer. In tonight's episode, newly promoted Tania seems destined to fail her first appraisal and Darrel tries to persuade Shelley that he would be the perfect flatmate.

Sian Reeves interview

Sian Reeves, who plays Gloria, chats to TV Choice about Series 2 of Lunch Monkeys...

I tried to think of Gandhi while watching Lunch Monkeys, a squalid office sitcom that occasionally makes you think of marching on Television Centre and setting fire to the BBC3 offices. Lord, it's depressing, one of those comedies that relies for its laughs (and it's audience, for that matter) on a collection of implausibly dim-witted people. If you find incontinence, phantom shitters and armpit-farts the acme of wit, you're in for a treat. But if you prefer a comedy not to have plastic protagonists and offer real human insights, I suggest you rent a copy of Toy Story instead.

Lunch Monkeys had the grey pallor of Wardle's charred grayling, a dull sitcom in which Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps entered into an unhappy marriage with a sub-standard retread of The Office. It centred on the workers of an office postroom. There was a bitchy office manager, thick lads who are quite endearing, a blonde, female good-hearted object of lust, a slimy, mucky solicitor, all of whom said exactly the crass jokes you'd expect from them. Nigel Havers looked understandably depressed as the office head honcho. One for the shredder.

Spirits in need of bolstering had the choice of two new comedies last night on BBC3: Lunch Monkeys and Off the Hook. The former - about a group of employees at a private injury solicitors' firm - broke two of the golden rules of modern comedy. First, don't set it in an office until memories of Gervais and Merchant's genius creation have been given at least 30 years to fade. And second, if you do set it in an office, do not include the line: "It just seems like there should be more to life than this." It makes people weep, and not in a good, recognition-of-a-timeless-and-immortal-truth kind of way.