Comedy Playhouse

- Season 17

(2016)

Ivan Brackenbury is the cheery if inept radio DJ at Bramlington Hospital where porter Ian D. Montfort fancies himself as a psychic healer and chaplain and Liverpool fan Kenny Mercer has aspirations of being a comedian. Long-term patient Terry however loves being in hospital, likening it to a cruise that doesn't go anywhere. New manager germ-phobic Susan Mitchell seeks to make sweeping changes at Bramlington, all cash-motivated, and Ivan in particular faces an uncertain future as a result, though he is blissfully unaware of the fact.

Brenda and Roger run their guest house Brenroger, not always harmoniously, her cheerful optimism at odds with more realistic attitude. Their cleaner Mabel brings home Sid the Suitcase, her dodgy boyfriend, to the annoyance of her son Raz. Sid's doctor, shy Martin, makes a date with quiz team rival Chloe at his local pub, whilst his brother Tom, a motor neurone sufferer, thinks acerbic thoughts about it and Milton and Pearl bemoan their faulty fire alarm and their son Eliott's choice of wife, shopaholic Samantha, who book into Brenroger and encounter another faulty ...

Studio sitcom about three marriages in various states of disrepair. Rob and Cathy have been married for a long time, and it shows. Evan and Fiona's marriage is one big, noisy argument punctuated by even noisier make-up sex. And David and Georgy have just moved in next door to Rob and Cathy - he's in his 60s, she's in her 30s - firmly putting the (younger) cat among the (not very welcoming) pigeons. When things get tricky in these relationships the characters are able to stop the action, explain themselves directly to the audience and start it all up again.