Black comedy series centred on Keith Merchant, a recovering alcoholic, as he makes his way through his new sober life.
Keith is worried that Tom is being bullied at school. In order to attempt to make himself and Tom look more aggressive, he buys a 4x4 from Shaun (Neil Fitzmaurice), a fellow AA member, and uses it to stand up to the bully's mother. Keith tells Anita that he is taking the car for a test drive, but Anita demands he returns it. Keith later learns that his overheard comments about one of Tom's overweight friends have led to another boy being bullied. Shaun later tells Keith that he is likely to be laid off, because his workmates bully him. Keith advises him to stand up for himself, but this leads him to relapse into drinking. On the way back from AA, Shaun vomits in the car, meaning he cannot return it.
Keith is worried about both his masculinity during Tom\'s football practice. He also worries about some not getting his iron back after it is lent to some dinner party guests. He tries to get the iron back by stealing the guest\'s phone number from Anita\'s mobile, but she stops him. At AA, he befriends a member who finds it hard to socialise. Keith\'s friend Richard convinces him to become more masculine by sending each other rude text messages. However, Keith accidentally sends one text to everyone in his address book.
Keith has problems at AA with Marianne (Susan Earl), a Christian woman who talks to her cat, Chairman Meow. He is also not wanting to go to a recorder performance given by Anita\'s nephew Paul, partly because he has Down\'s Syndrome, but mainly because Paul gropes him. At AA, he is encouraged to help someone, and is asked to take Chairman Meow to the vet. However, they learn that he possibly has cancer. After taking Paul out, his parents eventually think he is having a loving relationship with someone. Marianne then loses her faith, begins drinking and asks Keith to have sex with her. Luckily, Chairman Meow only has a furball and Marianne regains her faith.
Keith is told off by Doug for holding a side-converstion despite the fact he was trying to help someone. Carl (Phillip Wright), a new member of group arrives after Doug spots signs of his alchoholism. He and Anita hold a surprise birthy party for Anita\'s father, and give him a plasma screen TV as a gift. However, Anita\'s brother Rob, a drug addict, has yet to pay his share for it. During an argument, Rob throws a ball which Keith fails to catch, resulting in the TV being broken. An intervention is organised to help Rob, but eventually he breaks down over the broken TV. At AA, Carl leaves the group but Keith welcomes him back in. Carl offers Keith a new TV for £600, which he pays for. It is later discovered that he was a conman, with everyone at the meeting giving him money for faulty electrical goods.
Keith using his AA meetings as an excuse for not seeing the grandparents. During the meeting, he pretends to yawn to indicate he thinks it is getting boring, but causes offense. A new AA member, Charlie (Nicholas Burns), is in the middle of \"First week euphoria\" of not drinking. It is then recommended that Keith sits in \"The chair\", talking to the whole group. Richard says he should talk about using the AA meetings to get away from his family. Keith does this, but everyone is shocked by him. Worried he is not helping anyone, he tries to help Charlie, but he causes more offense and ends up destroying Charlie\'s \"First week euphoria\", resulting in him wanting to get drunk. He runs across the road to do so, but is run over and dies. When Keith visits the dead body, he spills coffee over the corpse. Keith swaps his clothes over with Charlie\'s, but he still causes trouble at the funeral when his mobile phone rings during the service.
Although at AA he annoys his fellow members by telling a trivial story, Keith tries to befriend a fellow member, Arturo (Matthew Ashforde), whose father got shot. When he is out with his family, Keith is annoyed when his father remembers a story incorrectly about getting a model plane. Keith also worries about some kids hanging around outside his house, who later jeer Anita. She tells Keith to concentrate more on his children than his father. At AA, Keith learns that Arturo\'s father got shot during a bank robbery and how his father being in jail resulted in a lack of a bond between them, thus inspiring to be a better father. The following meeting, he learns that Arturo and his father have been arrested for robbery. Keith finally confronts the kids outside and ends up being stabbed. In hospital, Richard tells Keith that standing up to the kids is an important step towards his alcoholic recovery.
Christopher Fairbank
Stephen Mangan
Kate Ashfield
Michele Austin
Tom Goodman-Hill
Neil Fitzmaurice
1968
1992
1994
2002
2019
2012
2025
1984
2003
2005
1990
1995
1975
2007
1991
1979
2011
1972
1999
