'The worst film ever made': how Sex Lives Of The Potato Men broke British cinema

When the puerile comedy bombed, the film-makers blamed the critics and the Tories blamed the UK Film Council. Twenty years on, we reassess the legacy of a cinematic pariah whose champions include Stewart Lee and Mike Leigh.

Revolutionary mundanity: The Office at 20

In this age of streaming services, from Netflix to Disney+, TV series are churned out on an industrial scale, with thousands of episodes in various genres at your fingertips. Therefore, the fact that the 20th birthday of one particular series is being remarked upon, let alone celebrated, is something of a miracle, highlighting the genius that is the UK version of The Office.

Lucy Davis on her battle with bulimia

'A cycle of throwing up and starving was my solution'.

The Office - where are they now?

What has happened to the actors who helped to make The Office? We never did hear much from that man Gervais again...

Lucy Davis: My life's been tough since The Office

"Anorexia. Binge eating. Divorce. My life's been so tough since The Office", says Lucy Davis.

Even for Married Single Other, a drama that has fondant icing where its dialogue should be, some of this week's lines are so sickly you might need to have a bucket handy. Lillie and Eddie's wedding plans are accelerated after her recent news and she goes up into the attic to record a series of messages for her family. She tells Eddie, "I love the way kiwi fruit makes you sneeze," which is the signal for an unashamed, all-out sob-fest that takes absolutely no prisoners. Yet still the tone is wildly uneven, lurching from jokey to maudlin without pausing for refreshment, though the cast do their best to grasp at any tiny piece of credibility, particularly the splendid Shaun Dooley, who is really the emotional heart of Married Single Other. Though his beloved Lillie (Lucy Davis) is wretchedly annoying, he is so quietly sad and broken that you'd need a heart of plutonium not to share his misery.

So last week we discovered a possible explanation for Lucy Davis's bizarre performance - her character, Lillie, has an inoperable brain tumour. And not just inoperable but untreatable, sparing this series from actually confronting the realities of living with cancer. It's the same reason Sally Webster's breast cancer in Coronation Street is being eradicated by nothing more unpleasant than lying in her bedroom, flicking through magazines until she's given the all-clear.

Lillie's only symptoms have been smelling burning rubber and frequent spells of deja vu, which make a brain tumour sound like a day at the circus. Which is what she gets this week as her fabulous fiance Eddie organises a magical wedding and a musical reception that wouldn't look entirely out of place in Glee.

Viewers who've invested in this series from week one may be dismayed that the "Other" in the title turned out to be "terminally ill".

"You're such a girl," Lillie (Lucy Davis) teased her partner Eddie last week. Unwittingly, perhaps, she gave away the secret topsy-turvy formula underpinning this series. All the men are acting like sappy romantic fools, while the women are bored witless by talk of bridal magazines and marriage.

Davis, in particular, whose character faces a tribunal tonight for thumping a violent husband (not hers), continues to turn in a very odd performance. Every line is delivered flippantly through clenched teeth, suggesting she's either had her jaws wired shut, or she's a superior being from another planet and is merely humouring these pathetic humans she's been forced to live with.

But there's one startling change this week, as Abbey's (Miranda Raison) eyes have switched from brown back to blue. Perhaps this is down to the physical effort of resisting Clint (Ralf Little). It's been a month and he's about to be put out of his misery.

Romantic comedy drama has always been a precarious juggling trick to pull off, especially in the shadow of the Cold Feet's unassailable reputation. So all credit to writer Peter Souter for even attempting the feat with Married, Single, Other.

An ensemble piece, the show uses three contrasting pairs to explore various aspects of heterosexual, thirty-something, white, Anglo-Saxon coupledom. There is one black character, but so far she has had to conduct her relationship off-camera.

First up are Lillie (Lucy Davis) and Eddie (Shaun Dooley), partners and parents for 16 years, but yet to commit to marriage. Then we meet Babs (Amanda Abbington) and Dickie (Dean Lennox Kelly), practitioners of wildly satisfying sex, but emotionally incompatible and financially insoluble. Finally there's bed-hopping playboy Clint (Ralph Little) cherishing an uncharacteristic devotion to Abbey (Miranda Raison), a beautiful model who is tired of the attentions of shallow men.

So far, so formulaic, but Married, Single, Other really does strain to impress with dialogue that is clever to the point of infuriating. All of the characters, including the teenage cast members, effortlessly exchange the kind of badinage that looks great on paper, but tests an actor's abilities, and patience, to the limit. Davis and Dooley just about pull it off, everybody else struggles to convince.

Little has the hardest time. His casting as a smooth-talking, worldly-wise ad man/lothario is irretrievably undermined by the first shot he features in, with bare chested Clint seen sitting in his bed beneath a giant soft-porn nude photo that would offend the sexual sophistication of a 12-year-old boy. Quite how everybody involved failed to realise that this visual shorthand screamed 'I am emotionally and sexually retarded' is beyond me.

Clint, the show labours to assure us, is flawed, but likeable and this is largely how I feel about Married, Single, Other. There's not enough comedy and too much schmaltz, but episode one did contain several surprises and one genuine shock, with the characters sufficiently engaging to merit sticking with a little longer. Which isn't the advice I'd give to Abbey regarding Clint.

If you can't face the densely plotted and complex Five Days, which starts tonight on BBC1, then you might find some light relief in Married Single Other, with its mix of sentiment and broad comedy. If only it was a bit less coarse and a little bit warmer. In the second episode, Clint (played by Ralf Little), the womaniser in the group of friends, still hasn't heard anything from Abbey, the enigmatic model with the mesmerisingly bad hair extensions. When he does, he decides to throw a dinner party at which he can impress her and, more importantly, persuade his friends to tell her flattering things about him. It all goes badly and predictably awry. His mates slowly tear one another apart as their relationships start to fracture; Babs is furious with her lazy ex-lover, Dickie; while Lillie (a winking, shrugging and twitching Lucy Davis) sounds as if she might be going off the idea of marriage to caring paramedic Eddie (Shaun Dooley).