In actual fact, Bodily Harm's not at all bad

Bodily Harm (C4)

Immediately after sacking him, his boss asks Mitchel Greenfield how he feels. "Like you've beaten me up," replies his now ex-employee in Tony Grounds' two-part drama.

That's only the start of a day that begins badly when he's made redundant from his job after 25 years in the City ("I like you but I'm letting you go. You know what I'm talking about, you're not any good - nice guy, wrong planet") and goes downhill from there.

He discovers his father (George Cole) is dying. Neither he nor his mother (Annette Crosbie) will let him mention his brother Justin, who's in prison. The daughter he adores (Sadie Thompson) tells him she wants to go away to boarding school.

Neither parent wants to go to the party. "We'll just show our faces," says Crosbie. "Can't we send them a photo," retorts Cole, who later throws up into the swimming pool occupied by guests at Mitchel's 40th birthday party.

Then to cap it all, the party ends with him being an eyewitness to his wife (Lesley Manville) giving and receiving oral sex with their smarmy next door neighbour Tintin after he suggests a Spanish kiss. "What's that," she asked. "A French kiss only further south," he replied.

They're at it while, unbeknownst to the pair, Mitchel, is buried beneath a pile of coats of the bed. The moment Mitchel rises unexpectedly beneath them made for a great moment. Especially as he's wearing a gorilla head, a present from his daughter after he's said to her: "Wouldn't it be great if you could open the wardrobe and choose which face to wear?".

As Mitchel was played by Timothy Spall, it was a foregone conclusion that the poor man was going to have a miserable time. Perhaps it's that face, but he seems to be making a speciality of playing men enveloped in a mid-life crisis. It certainly seemed as if life was ending, rather than starting, at 40 for Mitchell.

Funnily enough, Bodily Harm was shown the same week as the release of the new Mike Leigh film All Or Nothing, in which Spall and Manville play another unhappily married couple, although working rather than middle class this time. But it wasn't just that coincidence that gave Bodily Harm a feeling of deja vu. The drama was well-made and well-acted but didn't really have anything new to offer than we haven't seen in dozens of TV series already.