After decades of television series dedicated to police officers, firemen, doctors, nurses and teachers comes a new recruit to the public-sector-worker canon - postmen. Danny Brocklehurst, formerly a scriptwriter on Manchester-set Clocking Off and Shameless, says he wrote Sorted because he believes the Royal Mail's 130,000 staff represent "ordinary, working-class lives", which audiences want to see more of on the small screen.

That assertion is open to question. After all, it has been only a couple of months since The Street, Jimmy McGovern's drama, also set in Manchester, was shown on BBC1. The trouble with all these Mancunian real-life pieces of grit is that they frequently cut the corners of reality in order to fit into their 55-minute prime-time slots.

Incidentally, if the BBC is so willing to commission programmes about those who work for publicly funded behemoths, when is someone going to have the balls to portray accurately the lives of the corporation's own employees in a drama of this kind? With the recent spate of newspaper stories about the BBC and the eye-wateringly high salaries it pays to some of its staff, there must be legions of licence-fee payers keen to learn how their £131.50 is really being spent.

But back to Manchester. Sorted focuses on the tangled on- (and off-) duty lives of five postmen and their boss. Harry (Neil Dudgeon) is a middle-aged father. Radge (Cal Macaninch) is a pot-smoking Scot. Barmpot (Will Mellor) is an aspiring Labour MP (does he really expect to make it on to the green benches with that name?). Dex (Dean Lennox Kelly) is a carefree dimwit. Jack the new boy (Mark Womack) is a secretive Scouser. And Charlie King (Hugo Speer) is the sorting office manager. It's worth explaining who all these people are because they seem to do most things together, whatever the occasion.

Episode one (18 July, 9pm) was all about married Harry, who helps save the life of single, attractive Roisin, played by Maria Doyle Kennedy, during his mid-morning round. She is having an asthma attack on her sitting-room floor as he tries to deliver a parcel. He sees her through a window, telephones for an ambulance and breaks into her house. No wonder the Royal Mail is so inefficient these days: by the next scene Harry is sitting in A&E chewing his fingernails and awaiting news of Roisin's condition, his satchel of post long since abandoned. More absurd still, his boss, Charlie, also takes the morning off to join Harry at the hospital. Don't these people have any work to do?

The inevitable ensuing plotline is thinner than an Airmail envelope. When Roisin recovers she and Harry go for a drink and enjoy a goodnight kiss. Cue Harry asking questions of his 20-year marriage, the anniversary of which he and his wife Kathy (Eva Pope) celebrate - with all of Harry's work colleagues - the following evening.

Then comes the twist. Kathy has a car crash and slips into a coma, at which point Harry's workmates touchingly drop what they are doing and race round to his house to be by his side, through the night, as they await news of Kathy's condition. Presumably Harry has had enough of the local A&E department for one week, even though it was his wife, and not a perfect stranger, who was knocking on death's door this time.

When the police tell him that the crash was probably due to the level of alcohol in her bloodstream, Harry becomes suspicious. He looks in her Filofax, wondering why she hadn't been at work, and discovers she's been having regular appointments that she refers to as "Royal Visit". After a wrong turn, Harry discovers Kathy hasn't been conducting secret meetings with a member of the monarchy. She's been having an affair with his long-standing friend, and boss, Charlie King.

All this action, along with a few tolerably "comedic" sub-plots, is held together by some very weak lines, and that cheap glue that all TV dramas now seem hooked on: the customary 20-second blast of popular music. Admittedly I liked most of the songs - by Van Morrison, The Jam and others. But there's something desperate about this device. And no one likes desperate. Return to sender.

Andrew Billen is away

Pick of the week

The Boys Who Killed Stephen Lawrence
Wednesday, 9pm, BBC1
Lawrence's murder is still unsolved after 13 years. The reporter Mark Daly reopens the inquiry.

I Love You. And You. And You
Wednesday, 11.05pm, Channel 4
Investigates whether love triangles - and multiples - really work.

Restoration Village
Friday, 9pm, BBC2
Griff Rhys Jones and friends do battle to help save some of Britain's neglected architectural treasures.