By Llwynog45

Set in a football supporters club, there are many well known faces here, and it treads a familiar beer sodden square of carpet, to BBC One's The Royle Family. Written by David Earl and Joe Wilkinson, this is loaded with great comedy actors, but is it in the Premiere league, or The Evo-Stik League Northern Premier of sitcoms?

In this episode Pete (Craig Cash) attempts to break the world record for eating fish fingers and Doreen (Sue Johnston) gets a little flustered when Redbridge Rovers legend Roger Small makes an appearance. Pathetic Petes' world record fish finger eating attempt ends with only a meager four 'stick dicks' eaten, only for pathetic Pete to pronounce "I lost my appetite and became rather overwhelmed."

At the end of the episode with over a hundred grilled fish fingers wasted, pathetic Pete pronounces "Any food going Dorr, I'm stavin'" a great one liner to end an episode. What isn't overwhelming about this that it seems that both Sue Johnston and Craig Cash are playing the same characters they do in The Royle Family only with different names. But this has its charms, and could be called heart warming and most shockingly, rather funny.

Diane Morgan's superb turn as slutty Big Mandy is a real highlight, she has some great lines and delivers them with aplomb. During a racy scene with geeky Willy (played by Pearce Quigley) she seductively announces, " I'm not wearing any knickers', only for geeky Willy to reply "Neither am I".
All the actors give great performances, and the script weaves many story lines and lots of jokes cleverly. Set mainly in one room (again, like The Royle Family there is a lot here to admire, a lot of characters to get to know. A slow burner rather than an instant hit I'd say, it's a shame some will never get to see this, but if you can access Sky One, give it a go, it may just score for you.

My favourite line so far was when Big Mandy (I think the joke is that she's as thin as a rake', was asked why she lost her car bumper when crashing into a neighbors garden, her reply: "I was trying to knock over his fucking sun dial". Nice.