Andy Partridge Ever since this first aired in the late 90s I was a fan. I've been a fan of Victoria Wood, Julie Walters and the rest for many years, but apart from Acorn Antiques (beautifully observed), no sitcom from Victoria Wood. Then dinnerladies... The cast are perfect: her familiar co-performers Duncan Preston, Celia Imrie and Julie Walters are flawless. Julie Walters steals every scene she's in. And Anne Reid and Thelma Barlow bounce off each other wonderfully. Shobna Gulati and (the as yet unknown) Maxine Peake, and Andrew Dunn completing the core cast and delivering their lines with impeccable timing. The beauty of dinnerladies is the interplay between the cast, and the language. Not a word is wasted. Such lines as "And where has it got you, having a pelvic floor like a bulldog clip?" or "Sex, it's like icing a cake - you've got to bloody concentrate!". It must have been a dream to act in. To write and script edit the show, with no additional input must have been incredible hard work, but the end result is a (probably slightly under-appreciated) gem. And it's only really coming to light now that Victoria Wood is no more. If this were her only legacy it would be enough, but her work spanned 40 years, and was so brilliant and diverse. And dinnerladies, for me, was right at the top of the list.

gee-15 Let's see...during the course of this series you have a woman who is implied to be in an abusive marriage, a man gets cancer, two people die (one of them a main character), a woman gets divorced and has a nervous breakdown, another woman has a baby out of wedlock and abandons him (temporarily). All of them end up losing their jobs...and this is a comedy.And a very funny one it is. Count me as a Johnny-come-lately to the Victoria Wood fan club having only recently discovered this wonderful comedienne. Being American, a lot of the jokes in this series go over my head but I still get plenty of them and the underlying theme of how relationships (romantic and non-) can help you get through the struggles of life is universal.

Sabrejetp It's no secret that Victoria Wood is a fan of soaps and it's clear that as a child she spent a lot of time watching popular TV, as did most of us. dinnerladies, which at the time of broadcast was presented as a revival of the sit-com has plenty of soap-opera aspects as well, and is all the better for them.For best results the episodes should be viewed in order, a mobile phone mentioned in the very last episode makes an appearance in the first one. We get to see character development and physical changes, not all of these parts of the story. Over time characters are filled out and we get more idea of what makes them tick. In fact this is done more carefully in dinnerladies than in some drama. In the world of TV, even in the Flintstones it grates when something you think you know about a character is arbitrarily changed, either because that week's writer doesn't know as much about the show as you do or they haven't worked the plot out thoroughly. In dinnerladies tremendous attention to detail is paid.This is an ensemble piece, like Dad's Army and the other Perry/Croft classics and we can recognise the naïve and gormless youth (Anita) and the daft ineffective officer type, Philippa /Celia Imrie. Some characters have catch phrases and these are worked into dialogue which is more like real speech, the way some people like to dwell on their medical problems.In films such as Full Monty, Billy Elliot and Brassed Off we get a side order of rather heavy handed politics, the noble worker verses the dead hand of political cost/benefit analysis etc. In dinnerladies the factory and the canteen have an uncertain future; this is a canteen in a manufacturing company for a start. Come to that a canteen is something of an anachronism, the business world is just so vulnerable to re-evaluating what matters, one day providing an in-house catering facility might be the height of corporate fashion, next week they want to use the floor space to provide space for focus groups. But the canteen staff don't see their work as a vocation, this is slinging pies not M*A*S*H. But for some the work is very important, when Stan gets the toaster going in time for the morning rush its Apollo 13 and the joy of being part a team, even if it is a team of women with a non-stop parade of embarrassing women's problems.But the women have other issues, husbands and parents to worry about and be tormented by. In a favourite episode Thora Hird, Dora Bryan and Eric Sykes make appearances in a "Take your Mother to work day". We get more background story on everyone and when it transpires that Philippa too has a dreadful mother for the first time she becomes a character we have some sympathy for. Perry and Croft didn't do this and the authentic soaps don't always it properly, they often just introduce horrible people who mellow, for no particular reason, over time.The cast is superb, Anne Reid (Jean) and Thelma Barlow (Dolly) deliver comic lines superbly and, authentically the workplace banter is very funny. If someone smiles at a line it's because that character got the joke, after Acorn Antiques there's no room unscripted behaviour. Julie Walters plays Bren's mum the hideous Petunia. Her main role is to continue to mess up Bren's life. No one pays much heed to her worsening kidney problems, somehow we manage to laugh these off.Comedy is a funny thing though; we want to have a laugh. And that's why the soaps work best with comedy. The catch phrases, the references to other shows, the horrible people, when we want to have a laugh these are all the cues we need.

IridescentTranquility Dinnerladies is a really excellent comedy. I have watched it over and over again and never seem to be able to get tired of it. The important thing here is that everyone has a life of their own. Taking as a starting point a scene many people might see every day - a canteen in a factory and the people who serve in it - might sound like a very boring idea, but the fact that Bren, Dolly, Anita, Twinkle and Jean are dinnerladies is really only secondary to the plot. Their characters are what really hold the piece together, and that's important. Along with Tony the canteen manager, Stan the handyman, Philippa the human resources manager and Bren's unbelievable yet totally believable (in a sense) mother Petula Gordeno the dinnerladies try to get through their lives. These are average, everyday people and yet they are so well written they can't help but be fascinating. What makes the set all the better is the script itself, and the fact that the characters are not afraid to confront each other, even the most trivial issues. From "I didn't go mad this morning and order one old lady instead of a load of broccoli?" to "I wouldn't need high heels if my feet were attached to a pair of scales" to "We won't see another minnellium" to "You don't treat a female woman like that" there are more classic lines in this sitcom than you can remember all at once. Another touch I especially liked is the subtlety of the script itself. Everything happens for a reason, so that by the time you've finished watching a whole series everything you've seen slots into place and makes total sense. I like this very much.