Dramedy by numbers

Review: A clichéd comedy about grown-ups and suicide is no laughing matter.

When I was at primary school, we once did an almost-scientific experiment on a ready-made chicken kiev. You drop the chicken kiev in a Pyrex bowl full of water and time how long it takes for the thing to disintegrate, revealing itself not as a plump, succulent breast but the compressed shreds of gristle and meat from less mentionable poultry-places.

Last night the BBC served up the first episode of Mutual Friends, a comedy-drama about six old friends reunited at the funeral of Carl, one of their number.

It is, then, Thirtysomething meets Cold Feet meets Mistresses meets a little bit of The Big Chill meets innumerable other comedy dramas whose names escape me because my memory is too full of random pre-pubescent reminiscences to have retained anything new since about 1991.

It looks good and slips down easily enough, thanks to good performances all round, and particularly sterling work by Marc Warren - evoking another of life's unarmed and furious losers - but a moment's thought reveals it to be another artfully moulded mound of mechanically recovered meat from the carcasses of other programmes.

Of course, most shows which open with the father of three small children killing himself might have felt obliged to remain quite dark for a while. Yet, as it turned out, Mutual Friends is a comedy drama with the emphasis firmly on the comedy. Carl's widow Leigh (Claire Rushbrook) was soon dealing with her grief by speaking in a series of wisecracks. Martin and Jen's decision to go for marriage counselling led to the usual scenes of a wimpy bloke in an armchair saying, 'So how does that make you feel?' a lot. Above all, Patrick is so total a representative of male self-centredness that even in an ITV1 sitcom, he might feel slightly broad-brush.

The odd thing, however, is that the result is by no means a disaster. For a start, the script, written by Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto (Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No 42), seems perfectly content with the fact that it's not pushing back the frontiers of television - and instead gets on with doing the traditional stuff as efficiently and funnily as possible. A strong cast helps too, with Marc Warren in particular showing an unexpected lightness of touch. (Last night he even managed to do the missing-the-school-play scene without going over the top.)

In the end, none of this is quite enough to solve the mystery of why so much talent has been poured into making such a bog-standard TV drama. On the other hand, it does make you fairly grateful that it has.

Mutual Friends started with a suicide but ended with a fire engine. Carl's suicide was the writers' device with which to bring together his surviving friends, Martin, played by Marc Warren, and Patrick (Alexander Armstrong). Martin was the worrying type and he had loads to worry about: not only was he about to lose his job as a solicitor but his wife, Jen (Keeley Hawes), announced that she had slept with Carl and that their marriage was in trouble (all Martin's fault).

Patrick also had his problems: a personal financial crisis had got his E-Type Jag repossessed and one of his business partners was edging him out of his own Boden-style catalogue company while edging himself into his former girlfriend's knickers. The worrying thing about Patrick, buoyed along by ego and testosterone, was his inability to worry. Yet this follicly challenged Lothario was not, it transpired, irredeemably self-centred. It was he, after all, who was responsible for the fire engine's comical appearance - called not to hose a conflagration but to fulfil Martin's disgruntled young son's ambition to ride on one.

Warren, Armstrong and Hawes are watchable actors but you couldn't help but wish their parts had been occupied by Jimmy Nesbitt, Robert Bathurst and Helen Baxendale and that, as in Cold Feet, there had been room for a genuinely funny subplot (as regularly supplied by the actors Fay Ripley and John Thomson). Nor could you fail to spot how inspiration was running out even as early as episode one. Martin, for instance, kept being overheard saying things that he shouldn't by the people he was badmouthing. Only once could you accuse the programme of inventiveness and that was in the character of Carl's widow Leigh, played with cheerful understatement by Claire Rushbrook, who had clearly lost her how-to-grieve manual and went round saying how 'cross' she was with him.

My hunch is that Mutual Friends will keep its audience, not least because it is unusual in putting at its centre male rather than female friendships. But how, even as I watched its titles (as ripped off from Mad Men), I wished for more subtlety, more black humour, more depth of emotion!

The Beeb has managed to hash out a few frothy, camp, enjoyable dramas over the years with the likes of Cutting It and Playing The Field. Now, it's got a new one to add to the ranks, with the debut of Mutual Friends.

Making a decent drama is hardly rocket science: keep it simple, write about what you know and hope the viewers can empathise. In this case, it was a group of dysfunctional friends in their thirties and forties, juggling love, life and infidelities with a healthy blend of irreverence and drama.

It's a straightforward format, which is probably why BBC's last high-profile drama, Bonekickers, failed so miserably. That had a similar conceit: a group of dysfunctional archaeologists juggling love, life and ancient mystic artefacts. Yep, that's where they lost us. Poor old Adrian Lester, who starred in Bonekickers, must have been slightly envious to see his former Hustle co-star, Marc Warren, getting some meaty lines and heartfelt drama here. Elsewhere, the rest of the cast was flawless: Keeley Hawes as Warren's self-righteous and estranged wife, Alexander Armstrong using a dash of his sometime persona as the Pimm's man to play a surprisingly convincing ladykiller (seriously, the man oozed charm) with Sarah Alexander as his ex-fiancée. Hopefully, the sardonic humour will continue as the series progresses.

Mutual Friends at first feels like a hybrid of just about every TV series and film about angst-ridden friends approaching midlife crises, from The Big Chill through Thirtysomething and on to Cold Feet. But, for all its familiarity, it could be a grower, thanks to Marc Warren and Alexander Armstrong as friends pitched into emotional turmoil after the suicide of their best pal.

Warren, who's best known for playing wide boys and sleazebags, shows a real gift for comedy (Mutual Friends is described as, oh dear, a 'comedy drama', which as we all know means it's not much of either). He does a morning-after-a-drunken-night-before scene that's so achingly realistic, complete with a drool-covered sofa, it's hard not to feel dry-mouthed and wretched in sympathy. Mutual Friends is an ensemble piece, also starring Keeley Hawes as Warren's unhappy wife and Sarah Alexander as Armstrong's ex-partner, but it's the comic chemistry between Warren and Armstrong (playing an ageing lothario) that could just turn out to be the best reason for watching.

Like internal EU frontier posts, the borderline between TV comedy and drama has long been unmanned. After reshooting the pilot, the BBC decided this ensemble show about a group of fortysomething chums is more drama than comedy.

Funny? Well, yes, it is in parts, and should get funnier as it settles.

Starring many familiar faces, Keeley Hawes from Ashes To Ashes, Marc Warren from Hustle and Alexander Armstrong from comedies, this is a mixed bag.

Any show that starts with a reunion of old friends at a funeral is going to end up being compared to 80s film The Big Chill.

This new six-parter starring Marc Warren and Alexander Armstrong as chalk-and-cheese mates will also hook the Cold Feet crowd - with a nod to Desperate Housewives provided by the mystery of why their old pal Carl threw himself under a train.

I'm guessing it's because his wife Leigh (Claire Rushbrook) was secretly guzzling all his anti-depressants. The supposedly grieving widow is in such high spirits during this first hour, you wouldn't be surprised to see her suggest a game of naked Twister at his funeral.

Martin, a grumpy lawyer played by Warren, is harder hit by his friend's death, especially after his wife Jen (Keeley Hawes) blurts out (for no good reason) that she slept with Carl, sending their already dodgy marriage into a nosedive.

Warren wasn't the first choice for this part, which was originally earmarked for Armstrong's comedy partner Ben Miller. But he's as magnetically watchable here as usual, especially when tormented by visions of Jen and Carl together. Armstrong's character Patrick is a blabbermouthed perpetual teenager with a mail-order clothing business and a silver E-type Jag - cunningly shot here to look longer than the QE2. Only his ex-fiancee Liz (Sarah Alexander) is unimpressed.

Though billed as a comedy drama, there's more drama than comedy - but plenty to enjoy in this first, pacy instalment.

Minig the same seam of midlife crises and relationship problems as which produced Cold Feet and Coupling, this new comedy drama revolves around estranged friends brought together after an old pal jumps in front of a train.

Marc Warren plays Martin, an uptight lawyer with a needy wife and kids, while Alexander Armstrong is Patrick, a self-confident bachelor with a sports car and a string of exes.

It's classic odd couple territory but, thanks to a snappy script and superb performances, this works.