TV: Lady luck with eyes wide shut

By FIONA BARBER

So well-groomed, so well-intentioned, soooo cheerful; meet Alison Braithwaite aka Mrs Doormat.

With a smile and a freshly pressed outfit, she dispenses glee to pensioners, neighbourliness to neighbours and understanding to her family who are possibly, the most hideous bunch of malcontents north of Watford.

Ever-perky Alison, ensconced in the leafy suburbs, believes she has it all. So when she wins £38 million in the Euro lottery, the money is deemed superfluous. It might, heaven forbid, change the happy life she enjoys with her bank manager husband and three daughters.

She secretly sets up a business for doing good.

It is here where At Home with the Braithwaites (TV One, Mondays, 9.30 pm), looks like it might get truly interesting.

Will money corrupt and will Alison's newfound perspective as a woman of financial power make her view her family and her life differently?

Tales of women overcoming the odds - and assorted ratbags - are coming thick and fast out of England (think Real Women, Band of Gold, Born to Run, Playing the Field). Where the Braithwaites differs is that Alison seems truly content with her middle-class lot before her windfall.

She isn't unhappy in marriage (although her husband is a philanderer and a plonker, she doesn't know it), she isn't a prostitute walking the streets of Bradford and she's not worried about her football team making it to the finals.

This sublime innocence opens the door for a most promising reawakening should she find out about her husband's trysts with his secretary in the Sainsburys carpark - and that her two eldest daughters are actually revolting by nature.

Apart from the promise of good things to come, the first episode of At Home with the Braithwaites sketched some wonderful characters.

One of the neighbours is delightfully (Joanna) Lumleyesque, all haughty and dismissive as she refills her whisky glass for the umpteenth time.

When Alison's eldest daughter clips a car, the neighbour puts things into perspective: don't worry, it's only a Fiat, she quips.

And when Mr Braithwaite (Peter Davison) is confronted by his mistress' declaration of love in the supermarket carpark he bravely responds with: "Well I'm very fond, obviously."

Good characters you can love or loathe.

The exception in the character stakes, of course, is Alison who doesn't really have one.

This must be hard work for actor Amanda Redman who we are accustomed to seeing in roles with teeth - for gritting, that is, not for continually baring in reassuring smiles. In Hope and Glory she played the stroppy wannabe deputy principal at a tough comprehensive school.

But this apparent out-of-character role for Redman only reinforces the notion that Alison Braithwaite, salt of the earth, might just get her hands a bit dirty.

She might also use her newfound wealth to wreak some revenge.

It's doubtful that the sunny and naive character in episode one will stay that way.

Otherwise, what's the point of 38 million pounds?