Whites

Like the culinary artists it satirises, Whites is a sitcom that blends ingredients that are sometimes traditional, often subtle, but are increasingly surreal. Tonight's episode finds Roland, sous chef Bib and new arrival Skoose balancing a number of different plates. Bib has a narrow window in his schedule to deliver an offering to the fertility clinic, only to be thwarted by ducks crossing the road. Skoose lets power go to his head. Roland, meanwhile, finds he is headed for disaster when he dates a powerful woman, who has a disability (that he hasn't yet noticed).

Another terrific episode of this beautifully observed, very funny comedy about not-quite-superchef Roland White (Alan Davies) and his oddball kitchen staff. Tonight an "elite car" gathering at Thaxted Manor brings a whiff of romance Roland's way, with utterly cringe-making results. Yet again, pretty much every member of the cast gets at least one killer line.

Whites: Roland and Alison

Nadia Albina, who played Alison in Episode 3 of Whites, talks about appearing in the show.

So numerous and so pronounced are the foibles of the modern celebrity chef that this sitcom manages to satirise most of them without ever making it seem as if it's going after a particular individual. Tonight, Roland (played by Alan Davies; but increasingly using the mannerisms of Richard Ayoade) finds his patience sorely tested when superchef Shay Marshall pays the restaurant a visit. Interestingly, he decides now is the time to greenlight Bib's pretentious new menu.

Alan Davies's depressed head chef, Roland White, becomes even more downcast tonight when a celebrity chef, Shay Marshall (Kevin Bishop) turns up at his restaurant and highlights the disparity in their fortunes. Since Marshall is little more than a caricature, however, it's hard to take White's animosity towards him seriously.

Whites: the Arrival of Shay

So here we are at Episode Two. We've survived the transmission of our first ep and been very lucky to get a few nice previews and reviews.

I've never found Alan Davies as hilarious as he finds himself on QI, but I did laugh at his new sitcom Whites, in which he played Roland, the bored genius head chef of a country-house restaurant, lazing about dictating a memoir about his love for offal instead of getting on with some work. Admittedly, it wasn't great that he started with a joke from the back of the fridge ("If God didn't want us to eat animals he wouldn't have made them out of meat"), but he made up for it with sharper asides as he sparred likably with demanding colleagues, notably front of house manager Caroline (the great Katherine Parkinson from The IT Crowd) who thought Roland ought to do more vegetarian, and frazzled sous chef Bib (Darren Boyd), who thought Roland ought to do more of anything.

The plot - turning on the arrival of a top publisher who might take an interest in his book - kept hope and disappointment simmering nicely, while the arrival of an intense young apprentice (please don't let him turn out to be a vampire) offered slower intrigue. With Marco Pierre White's unruly hair and Jay Rayner's beard, Roland seems a composite of the sort of modern foodie we associate with frantic TV kitchens full of effing and blinding, so it was refreshing the way he suffered his fools - dim waitress Kiki, butterfingered Axel ("Careful with the plates - you're not at a Greek wedding") - like children with learning difficulties. Even the food looked real.

Another view on Whites

Staff locked in the fridge? Whites has kitchen culture right, says chef Norman Mackenzie - he once found someone in an oven.

The very idea of a new sitcom on BBC2 makes my heart sink a little - all that British comic talent ploughing through a script in search of a gag - but it's probably best to start with low expectations. That way, when a programme like Whites comes along, one may be pleasantly surprised.

Given that it's set in the chaotic, high-pressure world of the restaurant kitchen, Whites is a surprisingly even-tempered thing. It stars Alan Davies as a self-absorbed executive chef at a country house hotel (he looks the part; in fact he looks exactly like Marco Pierre White), Darren Boyd as his demoralised sous chef and The IT Crowd's Katherine Parkinson as the catty front-of-house. There's a clumsy kitchen worker who spills things all the time, but there's also a creepy, ambitious agency cook named Skoose who adds some genuine menace. Whites occupies territory somewhere between dinnerladies and Peep Show (which I accept isn't much help to anyone trying to find it on a comedy map). Peep Show's Isy Suttie and Matt King (who co-wrote this) even turn up, as a hapless waitress and a dodgy meat supplier (he's dodgy, not the meat; not so far, anyway).

If it sounds surreal, inventive, original and hilarious then I'm over- selling it. It's gentle, subtly played, often funny and quite promising. At times it got a bit predictable, but I blame the leisurely pace, which sometimes allowed the viewer to catch up with the joke, and occasionally overtake it. In last night's episode the best laughs belonged to the minor characters, especially Isy Suttie's Kiki, who is kind, thoughtful and at least a half a bubble off plumb. "I remember my first day," she tells evil new boy Skoose. "I needed the loo but I was too scared to asked where it was, so I ended up going behind a gravestone in the chapel out back, and I thought I saw a ghost but it was just wee steam."

My main criticism of Whites is that it doesn't actually offer much new insight into the workings of a restaurant kitchen. Perhaps I've sat through too many episodes of Masterchef: the Professionals to be surprised, or even curious. Even the menu struck me as being a little tame. Comedy's one thing, but this show needs to take the cooking to the next level.

Last Night's TV - Whites, BBC2

One-liners that whet the appetite.