TELEVISION / Frank's for the memory

FRANK STUBBS is still at that stage in his budding business career when he is uncertain about how you drive a desk. A nice moment in Carlton's Frank Stubbs Promotes showed him fidgeting with his new desk accessories, like a little boy laying out his pencils and rubbers on the first day at school.

It was a silent scene, a little comedy of mental hesitation played out under the sceptical gaze of his reluctant partner, but it was typical of a script which never seems so busy with advancing plotline that it can't take time out to gossip about its characters' funny little ways. Much later, during a funeral reception, Frank is caught in the dead man's study picking out 'The Birdie Song' on his electric organ, a detail that sat in the drama's structure like a moment of idle reflection.

The fact that Timothy Spall plays Frank Stubbs helps enormously. That face, with its natural slack-jawed droop, is virtually an emblem of the unselfconscious life, a natural gift to a narrative which centres on a character determined to make the best of things, despite all evidence to the contrary. On the face of it, in a literal sense, Frank Stubbs is one of life's losers but that doesn't stop him dreaming of getting off the pavements (where he used to tout tickets) and into a nice little office (from which he can run a virtually illusory promotions business).

I don't suppose he can take credit for the face (unless he does special gormlessness training every day) but Spall's way with Simon Nye's lines fits the mood of the series perfectly too. The whole thing has a sort of genial affability which isn't gained at the cost of appearing dim- witted about the less pleasant sides of life. The series occasionally turns a blind eye in an unconvincing way (the nasty teenage yobs who nearly scupper Frank's plans are treated as a mere nuisance) but it has sufficient candour to ride over such bumps. After an uncharacteristically sombre passage, in which Frank muses sadly over the sudden death of his brother-in-law, his partner offers this in consolation: 'Still, didn't you say he was a bit of a tosser?' It is a world in which 'Cheers' is a perfectly appropriate response to offered condolence.

They must have a basic form, like a dressmaker's torso, on which the plotlines for this sort of series are stitched together. This time it's a shape already familiar from Minder and countless other chancer comedies: dodgy hero has to raise improbably large sum of money, enemy says don't be a fool, give up now, hero appears to be prevailing against all odds, hero suffers catastrophic eleventh hour disaster, hero wins out anyway, wipes smile off enemy's face.

In other words only character is going to pin you down for an hour of prime time. Fortunately Frank, a guileless man convinced that he is a sharp operator, has character to spare and he is brilliantly supported by Lesley Sharp as his sister Petra. When they're on screen together they occasionally lift very good formula drama a little higher still, as when Petra offered Frank some advice on how to get on with her chippy daughter: 'Don't keep saying she's got Mum's feet, Frank, you can see she doesn't like it.'