Trollied

In Anne-Marie O'Connor's perfectly understated supermarket sitcom, the staff are becoming more real with each episode.

And one very good reason to make the weekly trip to Valco is to see what Margaret is up to.

Played by Rita May, she's a wonderful character - because it's so rare for qualities like "nice" and "content with their lot" to be the starting point for comedy.

I love hearing about Margaret's little jokes with "her Alan" (which, of course, are never even slightly funny) and this week she's all a fluster because she's going to be Skyping her daughter online, who lives in Canada.

Meanwhile, at the meat counter, Kieran gets jealous when he spots another man checking-out his favourite checkout girl.

And Andy (Mark Addy) declares war on Masterchef, before revealing a surprising passion for Ian Botham.

It'll make you see those "Beefy" posters in a brand new light.

This show may not major on belly laughs, or even seek them, but it's created a core of winning characters in the staff of Valco supermarket. This week Leyton, the gauche shelf stacker, takes it upon himself to alphabeticise the entire magazine section. Butcher Andy reveals an unexpected passion for Ian Botham, and Margaret has had her hair done for some silver surfing - her first Skype call to family in Canada.

But the focus is on lovelorn best mates Kieran and Kate (lovely understated performances from Nick Blood and Chanel Cresswell) when a shopfitter with a rat's tail hair extension comes between them.

It's hard to know what to make of Trollied, the keen-to-please comedy set in a northern supermarket. It's likeable and has good performances (Jane Horrocks, Mark Addy and Jason Watkins), but it needs more definition - too often it appears like a series of mini sketches linked by the fact that they are all set in a supermarket. In this episode, the amusingly insecure Julie (Horrocks) is left in charge at Valco when Gavin (Watkins) is away on business. Andy (Addy), meanwhile, sees a fellow butcher in the shop and thinks his job is at stake.

Another view on Trollied

The set is brilliant, but you'd never see our staff using bad language, says Morrisons store manager Ian Richardson.

Review: Trollied, Sky1

Sky's first foray into original comedy goes behind the scenes at northern supermarket chain Valco. Will viewers be rolling in the aisles?

Trollied is the first of several new comedy shows being made by Sky this season.

The show is set in a supermarket, looking at the lives of a north-western branch of Valco ("Serves you right"). The characters include Julie (Jane Horrocks), the current deputy manager who currently is holding the job temporarily, or as she puts it "interimming" (and not "into rimming"); butcher Andy (Mark Addy), a man who can tell a type of sausage by simply resting it on his shoulder; and Margaret (Rita May), a pensioner who appears to be away with the fairies.

The series began with a double bill, which probably helped as it gave viewers who weren't sure about the show the chance to see how it would develop.

Before the series began some questions had already been thrown up by the critics. For starters, how come no-one had set a sitcom in a supermarket before, as it seems an ideal location - an environment from which the staff cannot escape from, with various layers of hierarchy, including managers, checkout staff and stockers. I think I know why such a setting has never done before - cost. Supermarkets are large buildings, and normally there is no way a supermarket would let a TV crew in there for fear of disturbing the business, so you have to build a huge set.

Luckily, when it comes to creating big-scale TV shows, Sky has experience. They're responsible for bringing Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels into real-life. Compared to creating a world resting on the backs of four elephants standing on the shell of a giant turtle, a supermarket should be simplicity itself. Mind you, it is easy to do when your channel is owned by the world's second largest media company (after Disney), a group which owns two of the most popular animated sitcoms in the world (The Simpsons and Family Guy), some of the biggest scale dramas currently on TV at the moment (House), and owns more newspapers than you can shake a hacked telephone at.

Trollied also has other problems when it comes to critical reception. Namely, as it is a workplace sitcom it will be compared to The Office and therefore everyone will look down on it. But why stop there? It is also a retail sitcom, so you could compare it to Open All Hours or Are Your Being Served? for that matter. Just because there are similar sitcoms to it does not mean that it will be rubbish.

In terms of laughs, there were a few - enough to give it promise - but whether or not it can sustain that I don't know.

Trollied review

It would appear that Trollied will be around for a while if it maintains the one-liner's and chemistry that the episodes work so well with.

Trollied, Sky 1, Thursday

If Sky's first comedy doesn't quite rock us in the aisles, its terrific ensemble playing comes close.

Last night's TV: Trollied/Sky1

I'm concerned about Jane Horrocks. She's being typecast, or so it seems to me. First that Tesco advert - you know the one, from the mid Nineties, the one she said paid for her home ("Tesco Towers") and stopped her having to do dross TV. That's as opposed to her new series for Sky1, Trollied, which, presumably, she doesn't think is dross TV.

Trollied, Thursday 9pm, Sky 1

I'm happy to say the opening double bill fared well, even if the comedy never reached a higher gear than "gentle" and a couple of gags got flogged to death.