Ordinary Lies

You'd expect ordinary lies in a second-hand car showroom along the lines of "Never been in an accident, mate," or "only one careful owner and two thousand on the clock"; not "my wife's just died" when she is at home with a mild outbreak of irritable bowel syndrome.  Salesman Marty's rather extra-ordinary whopper is, it's hinted, the tip of the iceberg among his colleagues' lurking secrets, but it's his story that features in the first of six 'Clocking Off' style episodes.  When his mid-life low leads him to drinking, late or no-shows for work and rows with his wife he is given a final warning.  The next day - running late again - he phones in and finds himself telling his colleague that he has just become a widower.

If you can get over this wholly unlikely scenario, and the fact that he relies on his sulking wife to wake him up in the morning when he has a working alarm, then this is an entertaining hour.  You know he's going to get found out, even he knows he's going to get found out, but it plays out well enough.  Jason Manford (Mark Addy's younger sibling, surely) is a real find and conveys the agony of a decent man who finds himself in a downward spiral of his own making.  He's ably supported by a great cast, notably Rebecca Callard as lonely do-gooder Grace, and things move from comic to serious as bumpily as Marty's own journey through his crisis.

Whether this is anywhere near as good as 'Clocking Off', or Brocklehurst's own recent 'The Driver' is still in the balance.  (The author also wrote 'Exile', which turned out to be a bit less than the sum of its parts.)  There are clear storylines shaping up here about a broken marriage, a missing partner, drug couriering and old family secrets, and they will need a sure hand.  So far, we're sticking with the characters, but needless to say, we wouldn't buy a second-hand car from any of them.