Lunch Monkeys

Lunch Monkeys is a dog's dinner

Even Nigel Havers can't save BBC3's new show. But a bad comedy on the youth channel shouldn't come as a surprise.

Over on BBC3, newcomer Lunch Monkeys has a stab at office-based comedy, which is brave, given that it's already been defined by one of the best shows in recent history. There's a man wearing a name badge with the word "penis" on it, and that really is as funny as it gets.

The young, feckless admin team who work in the post room of a firm of lawyers is the setting for a not particularly original new comedy series. Revelling in the mundane and the useless seems to be the staple of comedy shows these days. Nevertheless Lunch Monkeys does have its moments. These mainly involve new girl Shelley (Rachel Rae), libidinous solicitor Charlie (Steve John Shepherd) and the dim-witted Asif (Abdullah Afzal). Nigel Havers stars as a partner but looks rather out of place. In this first episode, Kenny (Christian Foster) tries to ask Tania (Jessica Hall) out on a date.

One of the best things about this new comedy series is that it doesn't have an idiot laughter track. Nor is it recorded in front of an audience, which is another trick that producers use to generate artificial hype. Lunch Monkeys takes place in the postroom of a personal-injury law firm, which offers a kind of sanctuary for school leavers, oddballs and assorted misfits. They are demented with boredom and spend all day behaving like unruly fifth formers, which places Nigel Havers - the firm's senior partner - in the role of a headmaster. The writer David Isaac drew on his own experience working as a supervising solicitor in a Manchester law firm. It's broad, good-humoured, knockabout comedy without a subtle bone in its body. Technically speaking, it is somewhere between painless and quite good fun.

Hang on. A new, work-set comedy with staff playing pranks on each other, a spineless boss and scenes divided by printers in action? But this isn't Wernham Hogg; this is personal law injury firm Fox Cranford. And the approach is totally different: it's overplayed and apparently aimed at the Two Pints demographic. The opener is a classic set-up, with new girl Shelley (Rachel Rae) arriving late on her first day and making a disastrous impression with her superiors. Nigel Havers adds a veneer of class, but it's all forehead-slappingly obvious.

We remember the pilot of this: a sitcom about five young loafers who work in an ambulance-chasing law firm in Manchester. Its tone is like The Office as played by the Two Pints Of Lager Repertory Company. And guess what? It's yet another multimedia extravaganza. Seriously, what was wrong with just making a TV programme and having people watch it? Why do we have to have a website, hmm? Imagine how much it must have cost to build all that. Moan, moan licence fee, etc.

How we made Lunch Monkeys

After cutting through the commissioning jungle, Matt Tiller explains how he recreated a working office environment for a new BBC3 sitcom.

BBC3 goes to Manchester for fresh pair of sitcoms

Nigel Havers is the unlikely star of one of a pair of new BBC3 comedy series from Manchester indies.

Admin (working title) is a 6 x 30-minute "slacker sitcom" by Manchester-based comedy and entertainment indie Channel K. It is set in the postroom of a law firm and follows a group of young workers who try to get on by doing as little as possible.

The series was piloted in May last year and was based on the real-life experiences of writer David Isaac, who also wrote for BBC1's Not Going Out. Havers will support a yet-to-be-confirmed and relatively unknown cast in the role of Mike, the firm's owner

Preview Article

A team of professional no-hopers and a frazzled boss - sound familiar? This comedy pilot, set in a no-win no-fee solicitors' office, is as original as the photocopier jokes. Yet there's something about the young losers from the postroom which raises a chuckle (especially Kenny)