KEY POINTS:
The Amazing Mrs Pritchard (tonight, 8.30pm, TV One) is Ros Pritchard played by Jane Horrocks as Bubbles from Ab Fab grown up, living in Leeds and managing a supermarket. She is a cartoon idea of what might make a wonderful boss and she is about to become the
boss of Britain.
At the supermarket, nothing escapes her notice; little escapes her liking for a platitude. "Neat and tidy; light and smiley." She cares about her employees: " 'Ows your mum's feet, Kimberly?" She knows when one of her employees is showing too much bum: "Tim: cleavage." Or when one of her customers is picking their nose: "Fingers out of nose, aisle 14."
She's the sort of boss you fantasise about chopping into little pieces and hiding under the fish fingers in the frozen foods aisle.
It is election year and when two rival politicians hold a rally which ends in blows outside her store, Ros announces, to applause, "I could do better than you lot".
And so it comes to pass. Ros sets up the Purple Alliance, with women candidates, and a slogan: Politics isn't rocket science.
What does Ros think of her campaign billboards? "I like the purple."
Women will make better politicians than men because "they're not infected with this obsession to be right all the time like men". This could be ironic - she is always right - but I fear the Amazing Mrs P doesn't do irony.
Hubby Ian: "Ros, you don't know anything about politics."
Ros: "I watch the news." And knows a nice-looking billboard when she sees one.
Invited to a television debate with the very scary shadow health minister, Catherine Walker, the two meet in the loo before going on air. Catherine says: "I'm going to wipe the floor with you when we get on air," which is the way tough-bitch women politicians talk.
"Right, well, I suppose that's your job. Ooh, I like your shoes," says Ros.
Ros points out that Catherine's brilliant career has been rather stymied: "Is it because you're a woman?" Catherine joins the Purple Alliance.
Ros' husband, who, of course, will turn out to have been a bit of a naughty boy (he nipped a girl's bum at a work Christmas party; she goes to the tabloids) is not very keen on all of this. "For some mad, mad reason you seem to think everything is your responsibility. Running the country is not your responsibility. What if you had to go to war?"
He doesn't vote for Ros but one little vote isn't going to make any difference.
After an even dafter plot development involving one of her employees, a wedding that doesn't happen, a suicide threat from said employee after which Ros flees her election night party to be at his side, she is announced the next prime minister.
This is all very ... tiring.
Tonight, she has to make a decision whether or not to send troops to Iran. When told that a situation has developed she asks her private secretary: "what do you want me to do about it?"
She plumps the cushions at No 10. Which is what any woman would do in a crisis. At least, it's what Bubbles might have done if she was made prime minister in a very silly television show about what might happen if a cartoon woman ran Britain.
