Television - Griff Rhys Jones fails to rescue this hoary old guff, writes Zoe Williams Mine All Mine (ITV)

Modern British television has a number of conventions habitually sketched out in such coarse, nursery brush strokes that a lot of time and money could be saved by simply floating some subtitles across the screen saying "Insert class-based cliche of your choosing", with maybe an apt pop-song soundscape.

Here are those conventions in a nut-shell: working-class families swear at each other a lot, but this cussing masks a very deep and meaningful love that the middle classes wouldn't understand; middle-class people are shocked and awed by the way the working classes shout at each other over the dinner table, but once their eardrums have adapted, they find it delightful and liberating; middle-class people are usually young men, and they usually fall in love with the young daughter of the working-class household, whose brashness exhilarates and transfixes them; said daughter will be haughty at first, but will come to understand that the middle-class suitor has regular human feelings underneath the stultifying politeness.

All this can be very well executed (as in Channel 4's Shameless) or very poorly executed. Either way, it gets more annoying with each repetition. So Mine All Mine (Thursdays, 9pm) - written by Russell T Davies, who has also brought us Bob and Rose and Queer as Folk - could be substantially better than it is and still irritate the hell out of you.

The Darling Buds of May format in this case centres on Danny (Jo Stone- Fewings), a Knightsbridge auctioneer called to Swansea to value a white bakelite phone. There, he encounters the Vivaldi family headed by Griff Rhys Jones, who does his affable-eccentric shtick with a Welsh accent that is generally passable, except that he always starts his sentences in England, moving decisively westwards on about the fourth syllable. This is very weird. You'd think, wouldn't you, that he was Welsh. The core contention of the comedy - that Welsh accents are inherently hilarious - is one that I think could have been debated at more length in the early stages of production.

There's a dumb blonde daughter, a whiz-kid son and a feisty older daughter (Siwan Morris), who delivers, early on, one of the worst cod-feminist piss- aphorisms I've ever heard: "Sometimes I say I don't know things when I do. That way, I get boyfriends." This nets her an inadequate squeeze called Gethin, who dumps her cruelly and inelegantly in a Swansea drinkerie, freeing her up for the attentions of the auctioneer. She maunders on a bit about being an old spinster, so I'm guessing there's a bit of hokey-pokey Bridget-Jonesery in the offing, though she isn't quite likeable enough to make you wish anything on her beyond a bout of laryngitis to impede her ceaseless, "sassy" yapping.

Candy (Joanna Page) expresses her dumbness and blondeness by entering a Pop Idol-style talent show, performing very badly and weeping histrionically on her way out, promising to show those know-nothing judges. Presumably this is meant as parody. One day, I'm going to run a masterclass in my front room for scriptwriters who think they can create a devastating satire on popular culture merely by aping it frame for frame with actors who are nothing like as believable and charismatic as the real thing. "Don't do it," I'll say, and then I'll give them a cup of tea and a piece of parkin and charge them a hundred and fifty quid.

Griff, meanwhile - boy, is he eccentric. He thinks he owns all of Swansea: he is "lord of the land and the bay and the people and the hills . . . all mine!". And he can prove it with an ancient will he has framed on the wall. Danny examines the will, e-mails it to his company (which seems to double as a legal firm and a PR company in that fictional world where all English poshos can perform all posh tasks), and there arrives a fleet of people in suits to declare that loveable old Griff is indeed lord of all he surveys.

I don't know where to start with this plot line - it's all done in the manner of a pantomime, full of bold colours, chasing scenes, shouting and suchlike, and yet it's not quite surreal or imaginative enough to warrant the vaudeville execution, nor is it in any way realistic enough to take its jarring moments of social conscience. (When a woman accosts our cosy Griff to complain that her mother worked every day of her life to buy her own house and he's just going to march in and take it off her, we're meant to experience some moral conflict. But it's hard when all you can think is: "This is very silly. God this is silly.")

It's not all bad. There's the odd funny line ("What channel was this on? UK Bollocks?" - that tickled me very slightly) and there is some passable acting from all the players, mindful as they must have been of the hoary old guff they'd been given to play with. But as inoffensive as it is, I actually came away quite offended - as a culture, we can do so much better. Who lets this stuff through?

Andrew Billen is away

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