Quick Cuts

How come BBC Four gave Georgia Pritchett's hairdressing salon comedy Quick Cuts a mere three episodes only? Whether the reason was timidity or budgetary, the show definitely deserves to be swiftly recommissioned.

Combining a traditional sitcom format with sketch-show sensibilities, Quick Cuts followed the fortunes of salon owner Sue, her family and the disparate group of eccentrics and incompetents in her employ, but with the narrative frequently punctuated by short, sharp hairdresser-client encounters ranging from the truly inane to the deeply intimate.

Some of the sitcom plot lines felt a little forced, and Sue's dodgy boyfriend Trevor seemed to have walked in off a different show altogether, but Pritchett's dialogue was a delight, the cast were terrific and anything starring Doon Mackichan is, by definition, a good thing.

Doon Mackichan is in her element as salon owner Sue, whose wedding day is beset with comedy problems. Dodgy Trev, who's barred from all the pubs in town (and the whole of Bratislava), spends his stag night waiting for nature to take its course after the dog ate the wedding ring. Who cares about the stupidity of the plot and sketch-show style bits that fall flat when you're never far from one of Sue's blunt one-liners: "How do you want your hair? Atomic Mutton?", not to mention one-worders such as "thighbrows".

The choppy sitcom ends with a strong focus on family - not surprising, given it's set on the eve of Sue and Trev's wedding. After Sue's frightful mum comes in for her wedding "do" - "Atomic Mutton" - the salon owner (wonderful Doon Mackichan) turns into a nervous teenager in front of a mysterious customer. Who is she to Sue?

Elsewhere, Marianne's (or should that be Martin's?) dad comes in for an awkward chat and Trev (Paul Reynolds) finds the most disgusting way ever of getting a wedding ring. Silly, rude and funny.

Our second appointment to the titular salon sees Trevor propose to shop owner Sue, suggesting an unorthodox route to long-term financial security. Gavin's pranking provokes a fierce response from Becky, while Annie continues her habit of choosing unsuitable dates. No less formulaic than the opening episode, the unrelated ramblings of customers are where the most enjoyment lies. In short, a show befitting BBC Four's original tagline of "A place to think". Albeit suffixed by "why isn't this on BBC Three?"

This new sitcom is very silly. Fortunately, it's also snappily written and stars Doon Mackichan, who could make a pair of scissors seem wildly suggestive and uproarious - and frequently does as sharp-tongued hair salon owner Sue.

Tonight, her naughty puppy of a husband, Trev, cooks up a harebrained scheme to solve their money worries: faking his own death so Sue can claim the life insurance. But what really makes this sitcom a cut above are the warts-and-all exchanges with the salon's hapless customers.

TV Review: Quick Cuts

The customers' vignettes are brilliant. Most of the time, the poor clients are the onlookers to the Quick Cuts staffers' chaotic lives, but there are some throwaway one-liners that are just surreal enough to sound true and have a sort of bleak horror to them.

Quick Cuts (BBC4) was far less hellish [than reality show Hollywood Me] and had just the one real problem. The performances were strong, the comic timing impeccable, the direction sharp, the idea - a sitcom about a dysfunctional workplace family of hairdressers - a nice one. It just didn't quite have characters. Unfortunately, without strong characters there is no sitcom.

What it did have was labels: the debt-ridden shopaholic; the mid-transformation transsexual woman; the eternally single one. Beyond those descriptions it would be a struggle to find adjectives to describe any of them. It didn't help that mother figure Sue spent most of the first episode high as a kite on dodgy anxiety pills, getting excited that her wee had turned blue. We reached the end of the pilot knowing almost nothing about the main character's normal behaviour. Which, like bright blue wee, is a bad sign.

It may yet find its feet. Sitcoms often take more than one episode to find out who their characters are. But the risk is that their issues will continue to obscure their personalities. If they do Quick Cuts could be in for a quick cut.

Georgia Pritchett wrote the relentlessly bland Life Of Riley for BBC One, so I approached her latest effort Quick Cuts (BBC Four) with trepidation.

The good news? Well, it's not bland: it had Doon Mackichan tripping on funny pills and jokes about comas. The bad news? Where to start...

Semi-improvised, which would explain lines such as 'I once caught my finger caught in a walnut', Quick Cuts is less a sitcom and more a sketch show.

Set in a hairdressing salon staffed by losers and loons, the action quickly cuts back and forth between the daft misadventures of the salon workers and weird one-liners involving customers, all of whom have been hired from Oddballs Are Us.

It's not a bad concept but unless you find the idea of blue wee (Mackichan saddled with a limp running joke) and calling a client 'Mrs Pubehair' funny, then Quick Cuts is about as funny as a slow-motion back, sack and crack.

Doon Mackichan stars as the proprietor of a down-market hair salon in the promising new comedy Quick Cuts. It's not the most original idea in the world for a sitcom, but it is a robust one, with the turnover of customers giving you all kinds of opportunity for comic interludes that are a break from the ensemble dynamic ("Do you ever worry that you might be the anti-Christ," asked one pensive punter).

And it has a very good cast, including Lucinda Dryzek as Becks, the resident airhead and Jessica Gunning as a staff member trying to break a long sexual drought. It's described as semi-improvised in the Radio Times. I do hope that one of the improvised moments was when Mackichan sheared a clean swathe through the hair of her errant boyfriend, Trevor - a genuinely unexpected sight-gag. But if so, Paul Reynolds deserves some kind of medal for staying in character.

Review: Quick Cuts, BBC Four

Poor debut for a hairdressing salon-based sitcom.