Ordinary Lies (BBC1, 9pm)

ACTRESS Sally Lindsay was so keen to play the role of fibbing Kathy in Danny Brocklehurst's Ordinary Lies that she told a whopper of her own.

Her character has a Newfoundland dog to work with and the 41-year-old told the producers that she was fine with animals.

"Working with dogs proved to be a slight problem as I have a dog allergy. When I got the part I was told that I’d be working with a dog quite a lot so I got allergy tablets. It wasn’t a small dog either – it was like a grown man in a dog outfit, it was huge. We used to joke that he unzipped his costume and had a fag at lunchtime," she jokes.

The drama set in a real Warrington car showroom features a group of employees including mechanics, salesmen, PA, Head of Admin and company boss. "It’s about their lives and how they all work together, but they’ve all got their own individual secret or lie that they are harbouring and therein lies the drama," says Lindsay. "My character is approaching 40 and is happily married to Ralph and they have two grown-up children as they married pretty young. They’ve got a lovely house and she’s happy with her life. She’s worked at JS Motor’s since she was 17, so she doesn’t know anything else, but absolutely loves it. She’s in charge of everything and knows everybody’s business and is the office gossip. She knows where the skeletons are buried and her boss Mike, played by Max Beesley, literally can’t function without her."

Kathy's lie is that she decides there’s something missing in her life and embarks on an affair.

"When she’s harbouring this lie, she sees something quite horrific that she shouldn’t which affects her greatly and the moral is what should she do about it? She feels she has to do the right thing, but there’s the dilemma," says Lindsay about her assignation with Niall, played by Edward MacLiam.

Is Kathy someone that audiences will be able to relate to?

Kathy is very relatable on a human level; Ordinary Lies celebrates the normality of the British public, which is the beauty of it. We all have regular lives but sometimes things happen that make them irregular. I think the more normal Kathy is, the more brilliant the story is, as you don’t see it coming.

40 Kids by 20 Women (Channel 5, 9pm)

THE programme features Mike, Keith, Nick and Russian, four fathers who collectively have at least 70 children with more than 40 women. Mike is 56, a self-professed womaniser and sex addict, and father to more than 40 children, but thanks to an alcohol addiction, many of them have been placed in care. He's now on a mission to win his children back and reconnect with one of his estranged sons.

Meanwhile, Russian is a mechanic and it's not easy trying to juggle his heavy workload, social life and 12 kids, while pub landlord Nick has an 11-month-old son younger than some of his grandchildren, and unemployed Keith from Sunderland has been dubbed Britain's Most Feckless Father.

Nurse (BBC2, 10pm)

THE four-parter, starring Paul Whitehouse in multiple roles involving the world of mental health, comes to an end this week, as Community Nurse Liz (Esther Cole) has to face up to her own uncaring partner Don (Morgan Jones).

Whitehouse says: "The prosthetics on this show are sensational, but they take a hell of a long time to apply. I can't really complain too much but it takes about two or three hours usually to get it done. The most depressing element is at six o'clock in the morning, knowing I'm going to be stuck in the prosthetics for another 12 hours or so. They're hot, heavy and itchy. But the team are fantastic and I am unrecognisable in some things."