TV: Clocking off bloke walks in

By FIONA BARBER

Stuart Leach arrives home and hangs up his coat. The end of just another day? Well, it could be, but this one is different.

His son stares in disbelief. When his wife walks in her jaw drops with astonishment. The problem is Mrs Leach and young Eddie last saw Mr Leach 13 months before.

He walked out of their lives and now, without warning, has ambled back in as if he simply stepped out for a quick pint of best bitter and a bacon butty.

So begins the unravelling of Leach's short-term past, his mysterious other life.

The bloke-loses-memory plot is a well-worn one, but Clocking Off (TV One, 8.30 pm Fridays) offers a new slant.

By the end of the first episode the missing gaps are filled in and what is left is the seriously messy fallout of his great disappearing act. The question which remains, however, is did he really have amnesia or was it something darker and deeper?

To fill in more gaps would reveal the first episode's plot, but suffice to say even Leach appears surprised by what he discovers about himself and his complicated life.

And he has his own investigating to do to find out just what happened at home and at work when he was AWOL.

Clocking Off, produced for the BBC, has set the scene for Leach (John Simm from the The Lakes) and his family, employer and friends to begin the human mopping-up process.

His return also serves as an introduction to the people who work in a Manchester textile factory, many of whom appear to be related to Leach one way or another.

Clocking Off's publicity promises to link separate but interconnected stories within and outside the factory in the six-part series.

The Mancunian workers are played by the kind of actors who tend to turn up regularly in British dramas set in the north.

Sarah Lancashire (Raquel in Coronation Street and Ruth in Where the Heart Is) makes only a couple of brief appearances as factory-hand Yvonne in the opening episode, but will feature squarely on centre stage as the series develops.

There's Leach's brother Martin (Jason Merrells) and Trudy the office worker (Lesley Sharp) who we saw as one of the footy women in Playing the Field. Christopher Ecclestone (Cracker) is also billed as a lead character.

At first glance Clocking Off's strength is that it has shunned nice neat plot-lines and plunged head-first into uncertainties and shades of grey. Characters are neither saints nor sinners - and not exactly a bundle of laughs either- but they do look dead interesting in a flawed sort of way.

The scene is well set with the return of the prodigal Leach and the emotional havoc he has wreaked.