TV: A saucy dish worth sampling

By Fiona Barber

The Dinnerladies' working lives are geared towards three special words: shutters going up.

When the canteen barriers separating kitchen staff from customers are opened, the fruits - or meat and three veg - of the ladies' labours are revealed.

Dinnerladies (TV One, 9.35 Fridays) is the work of writer and comedian Victoria Wood, and centres on the staff of a factory canteen somewhere in the north of England.

Wood plays Bren in the sitcom, which also boasts Julie Walters and Thelma Barlow (Mavis from Coronation Street) in its cast.

As the characters move in and out of the kitchen they discuss their lives, what's on the telly and - in the first episode - the lamentable absence of granary torpedoes. One can only assume that these are wholemeal rolls. Lack of them is enough to throw a spatula in the works, and the scene is set.

More problems emerge in the form of the non-toasting toaster. And, yes, there's extra trouble in the kitchen when one of the team flees after failing to make the gravy.

You get the picture - there's drama aplenty.

There's also a good deal of wink wink, nudge nudge stuff going on and, initially at least, Dinnerladies looks a bit like a modern Are you Being Served?

For example, Barlow's character Dolly reveals she's none too pleased to see Tom Jones squatting on the front of the TV Times in his swimming trunks.

And when Bren is asked whether she had sex at the weekend she hits back in a matter-of-fact fashion: "No, I had to go t'laundrette."

The more the show progresses the more likely it appears that Wood is having fun with the likes of Are You Being Served? and Hi-de-Hi, and is paying homage to that great British institution, the grubby sitcom.

Dinnerladies also revels in exploiting stereotypes: there's a thick one, a salt-of-the-earth one, a sex-obsessed one, a couldn't-care-less one and an "I was in the war and if it's good enough for me it's good enough for you" one.

There's an original character in Petula, Bren's deluded and possibly criminal mum.

Also popping in is a human resources try-hard called Philippa, who advocates Scottish dancing for the workers.

With colleagues and family like that, it should take more than a few missing granary torpedoes to rattle the Dinnerladies.

But behind the shutters, missing rolls and dodgy toasters combine with innuendo to create a saucy dish of drama worth sampling.